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I am a citizen of the world first, and of this country at a later and more convenient hour.

Henry David Thoreau

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Henry David Thoreau
Age: 44 †
Born: 1817
Born: July 12
Died: 1862
Died: May 6
Abolitionist
Author
Autobiographer
Diarist
Ecologist
Environmentalist
Essayist
Naturalist
Philosopher
Poet
Translator
Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
World
Citizen
Hour
Later
Citizens
Hours
Firsts
First
Country
Convenient

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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We should read history as little critically as we consider the landscape, and be more interested by the atmospheric tints and various lights and shades which the intervening spaces create than by its groundwork and composition.
Henry David Thoreau
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This bird sees the white man come and the Indian withdraw, but it withdraws not. Its untamed voice is still heard above the tinkling of the forge... It remains to remind us of aboriginal nature.
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What a glorious time they must have in that wilderness, far from mankind and election day!
Henry David Thoreau
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Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe.
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History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning ofthings, which natural history might with reason assume to do but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,--when did burdock and plantain sprout first?
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Man is an animal who more than any other can adapt himself to all climates and circumstances.
Henry David Thoreau
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It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such. It is the bog in our brains and bowels, the primitive vigor of Nature in us, that inspires that dream. I shall never find in the wilds of Labrador a greater wildness than in some recess of Concord.
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The same soil is good for men and for trees. A man's health requires as many acres of meadow to his prospect as his farm does loads of muck.
Henry David Thoreau
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The Indian navigator naturally distinguishes by a name those parts of a stream where he has encountered quick water and forks, andagain, the lakes and smooth water where he can rest his weary arms, since those are the most interesting and more arable parts to him.
Henry David Thoreau
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It will always be found that one flourishing institution exists and battens on another mouldering one. The Present itself is parasitic to this extent.
Henry David Thoreau
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Friends will not only live in harmony, but in melody.
Henry David Thoreau
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The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. I have no wealth to bestow on him. If he knows that I am happy in loving him, he will want no other reward. Is not friendship divine in this?
Henry David Thoreau
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Go not to the object let the object come to you.
Henry David Thoreau
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No people ever lived by cursing their fathers, however great a curse their fathers might have been to them.
Henry David Thoreau
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By my intimacy with nature I find myself withdrawn from man. My interest in the sun and the moon, in the morning and the evening, compels me to solitude.
Henry David Thoreau
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Who looks in the sun will see no light else but also he will see no shadow. Our life revolves unceasingly, but the centre is ever the same, and the wise will regard only the seasons of the soul.
Henry David Thoreau
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The knowledge of an unlearned man is living and luxuriant like a forest, but covered with mosses and lichens and for the most part inaccessible and going to waste the knowledge of the man of science is like timber collected in yards for public works, which still supports a green sprout here and there, but even this is liable to dry rot.
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Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve.
Henry David Thoreau
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Roads are made for horses and men of business. I do not travel in them much.
Henry David Thoreau
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If we were left solely to the wordy wit of legislators in Congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonal experience and the effectual complaints of the people, America would not long retain her rank among the nations.
Henry David Thoreau