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I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion. I would rather ride on earth in an ox cart, with a free circulation, than go to heaven in the fancy car of an excursion train and breathe a malaria all the way.

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
Free
Fancy
Malaria
Earth
Solitude
Cart
Way
Breathe
Carts
Would
Anxiety
Pumpkin
Train
Circulation
Excursion
Car
Velvet
Cushion
Heaven
Crowded
Excursions
Rather
Ride
Cushions

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If a man constantly aspires is he not elevated?
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All men are children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the morning.
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Life is grand, and so are its environments of Past and Future. Would the face of nature be so serene and beautiful if man's destiny were not equally so?
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Heroes are often the most ordinary of men.
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There are many skillful apprentices, but few master workmen.
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The scholar may be sure that he writes the tougher truth for the calluses on his palms. They give firmness to the sentence. Indeed, the mind never makes a great and successful effort, without a corresponding energy of the body.
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The best thing a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those schemes which he entertained when he was poor
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I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home. I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful.
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There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.
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The poet uses the results of science and philosophy, and generalizes their widest deductions.
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Some do not walk at all others walk in the highways a few walk across lots.
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I do not know at first what it is that harms me. The men and things of to-day are wont to be fairer and truer in to-morrow's memory.
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It is dry, hazy June weather. We are more of the earth, farther from heaven these days.
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Only the defeated and deserters go to war.
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I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a multitude? They can only force me who obey a higher law than I.... I do not hear of men being forced to live this way or that by masses of men. What sort of life were that to live?
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No definition of poetry is adequate unless it be poetry itself. The most accurate analysis by the rarest wisdom is yet insufficient, and the poet will instantly prove it false by setting aside its requisitions. It is indeed all that we do not know.
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It is desirable that a man be clad so simply that he can lay his hands on himself in the dark, and that he live in all respects so compactly and preparedly, that, if an enemy take the town, he can, like the old philosopher, walk out the gate empty-handed without anxiety.
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One is not born into the world to do everything but to do something.
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