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What is wanted is men of principle, who recognize a higher law than the decision of the majority. The marines and the militia whose bodies were used lately were not men of sense nor of principle in a high moral sense they were not men at all.

Henry David Thoreau

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Henry David Thoreau
Age: 44 †
Born: 1817
Born: July 12
Died: 1862
Died: May 6
Abolitionist
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
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More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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Wherever a man separates from the multitude, and goes his own way in this mood, there indeed is a fork in the road, though ordinary travelers may see only a gap in the paling. His solitary path across lots will turn out the higher way of the two.
Henry David Thoreau
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Yet, for my part, I was never unusually squeamish I could sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish, if it were necessary.
Henry David Thoreau
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Philosophy, having crept clinging to the rocks so far, puts out its feelers many ways in vain.
Henry David Thoreau
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It is remarkable that there are few men so well employed, so much to their minds, but that a little money or fame would commonly buy them off from their present pursuit.
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We cannot write well or truly but what we write with gusto.
Henry David Thoreau
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Mythology is the crop which the Old World bore before its soil was exhausted.
Henry David Thoreau
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Don't be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.
Henry David Thoreau
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I hear beyond the range of sound, I see beyond the range of sight, New earths and skies and seas around, And in my day the sun doth pale his light.
Henry David Thoreau
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They who are continually shocked by slavery have some right to be shocked by the violent death of the slaveholder, but no others.Such will be more shocked by his life than by his death.
Henry David Thoreau
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If you are chosen town clerk, forsooth, you cannot go to Tierra del Fuego this summer but you may go to the land of infernal fire nevertheless.
Henry David Thoreau
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As far as our noblest hardwood forests are concerned, the animals, especially squirrels and jays, are our greatest and almost only benefactors. It is to them that we owe this gift. It is not in vain that the squirrels live in or about every forest tree, or hollow log, and every wall and heap of stones.
Henry David Thoreau
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But, commonly, men are as much afraid of love as of hate.
Henry David Thoreau
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When were the good and the brave ever in a majority?
Henry David Thoreau
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Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God's property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.
Henry David Thoreau
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find your eternity in each moment
Henry David Thoreau
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Where there is a lull in truth an institution springs up.
Henry David Thoreau
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A man might well pray that he may not taboo or curse any portion of nature by being buried in it.
Henry David Thoreau
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How can he remember well his ignorance - which his growth requires - who has so often to use his knowledge?
Henry David Thoreau
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For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly tack and veer and hold the middle of the pond, far from the sportsman... but what beside safety they got by sailing in the middle of Walden I do not know, unless they love its water for the same reason that I do.
Henry David Thoreau
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From my experience with wild apples, I can understand that there may be reason for a savage's preferring many kinds of food which the civilized man rejects. The former has the palate of an outdoor man. It takes a savage or wild taste to appreciate a wild fruit.
Henry David Thoreau