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The discoveries which we make abroad are special and particular those which we make at home are general and significant. The further off, the nearer the surface. The nearer home, the deeper.

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
Particular
Discoveries
Special
Abroad
Home
Significant
Make
Surface
Deeper
Discovery
Travel
General
Nearer

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Simplify, simplify, simplify.
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There must be the... generating force of Love behind every effort destined to be successful.
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Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.
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The mason asks but a narrow shelf to spring his brick from man requires only an infinitely narrower one to spring his arch of faith from.
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One attraction in coming to the woods to live was that I should have leisure and opportunity to see the spring come in.
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When I go out of the house for a walk, uncertain as yet whither I will bend my steps, [I] submit myself to my instinct to decide for me.
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A kitten is so flexible that she is almost double the hind parts are equivalent to another kitten with which the fore part plays. She does not discover that her tail belongs to her till you tread upon it.
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I do not speak to those who are well employed, in whatever circumstances, and they know whether they are well employed or not but mainly to the mass of men who are discontented, and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they might improve them.
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Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and Spring.
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Where is the unexplored land but in our own untried enterprises? To an adventurous spirit any place--London, New York, Worcester, or his own yard--is unexplored land, to seek which Frémont and Kane travel so far. To a sluggish and defeated spirit even the Great Basin and the Polaris are trivial places.
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If a man believes and expects great things of himself, it makes no odds where you put him, or what you show him . . he will be surrounded by grandeur.
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If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too.
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Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice.
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Let us not play at kittly-benders. There is a solid bottom everywhere.
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We can never have enough of Nature.
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So far as my experience goes, travelers generally exaggerate the difficulties of the way. Like most evil, the difficulty is imaginary for what's the hurry?
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In the summer we lay up a stock of experiences for the winter, as the squirrel of nuts?something for conversation in winter evenings.
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I am a happy camper so I guess I’m doing something right. Happiness is like a butterfly the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.
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If you chance to live and move and have your being in that thin stratum in which the events that make the news transpire,--thinnerthan the paper on which it is printed,--then these things will fill the world for you but if you soar above or dive below that plane, you cannot remember nor be reminded of them.
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Instead of water we got here a draught of beer, a lumberer's drink, which would acclimate and naturalize a man at once,-which would make him see green, and, if he slept, dream that he heard the wind sough among the pines.
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