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I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute Freedom and Wildness, as contrasted with a Freedom and Culture merely civil, - to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society.

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
Freedom
Absolutes
Wish
Absolute
Culture
Merely
Contrasted
Speak
Regard
Inhabitant
Nature
Members
Parcel
Part
Word
Wildness
Men
Society
Member
Rather
Civil

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I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere.
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The Ethiopian cannot change his skin nor the leopard his spots.
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However mean your life is, meet it and live it do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are.
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The greatest tragedy in life is to spend your whole life fishing only to discover it was never fish that you were after.
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Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify.
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Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence.
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What an admirable training is science for the more active warfare of life! Indeed, the unchallenged bravery which these studies imply, is far more impressive than the trumpeted valor of the warrior.
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We never conceive the greatness of our fates.
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We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.
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The words which express our faith and piety are not definite yet they are significant and fragrant like frankincense to superior natures.
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I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beechtree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines.
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What stuff is the man made of who is not coexistent in our thought with the purest and sublimest truth?
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Life is so short that it is not wise to take roundabout ways, nor can we spend much time in waiting.... We have not got half-way to dawn yet.
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On the whole, Chaucer impresses us as greater than his reputation, and not a little like Homer and Shakespeare, for he would haveheld up his head in their company.
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Some would find fault with the morning, if they ever got up early enough.. The fault find faults even in Paradise.
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One man lies in his words, and gets a bad reputation another in his manners, and enjoys a good one.
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The past is only so heroic as we see it. It is the canvas on which our idea of heroism is painted, and so, in one sense, the dim prospectus of our future field.
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There is no ill which may not be dissipated, like the dark, if you let in a stronger light upon it.
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My greatest skill has been to want but little.
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The imagination, give it the least license, dives deeper and soars higher than Nature goes.
Henry David Thoreau