Quote

Should not every apartment in which man dwells be lofty enough to create some obscurity overhead, where flickering shadows may play at evening about the rafters?

Henry David Thoreau

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Home
Overhead
May
Obscurity
Play
Lofty
Enough
Shadows
Every
Apartment
Men
Evening
Rafters
Shadow
Flickering
Create
Dwells

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Image
How earthy old people become --moldy as the grave! Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no foretaste of immortality in it. They remind me of earthworms and mole crickets.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
If you will not try, you will go to your grave with your song still inside you.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I have seen some whose consciences, owing undoubtedly to former indulgence, had grown to be as irritable as spoilt children, and at length gave them no peace. They did not know when to swallow their cud, and their lives of course yielded no milk.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Books that are books are all that you want, and there are but a half dozen in any thousand.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Decay and disease are often beautiful, like the pearly tear of the shellfish and the hectic glow of consumption.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
In the planting of the seeds of most trees, the best gardeners do no more than follow Nature, though they may not know it.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Your religion is where your love is.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Bribed with a little sunlight and a few prismatic tints, we bless our Maker, and stave off his wrath with hymns.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we mingle with the herd of common men.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
If we live in the Nineteenth Century, why should we not enjoy the advantages which the Nineteenth Century offers? Why should our life be in any respect provincial?
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The very uprightness of the pines and maples asserts the ancient rectitude and vigor of nature. Our lives need the relief of such a background, where the pine flourishes and the jay still screams.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Every nail driven should be as another rivet in the machine of the universe, you carrying on the work.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The poet's body even is not fed like other men's, but he sometimes tastes the genuine nectar and ambrosia of the gods, and lives adivine life. By the healthful and invigorating thrills of inspiration his life is preserved to a serene old age.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
If we cannot sing of faith and triumph, we will sing our despair. We will be that kind of bird. There are day owls, and there arenight owls, and each is beautiful and even musical while about its business.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, seewhat isbefore you, and walkon intofuturity.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The sacredness, if there is any, is all in yourself and not in the place.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
My desire for knowledge is intermittent but my desire to commune with the spirit of the universe, to be intoxicated with the fumes, call it, of that divine nectar, to bear my head through atmospheres and over heights unknown to my feet, is perennial and constant.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
This life we live is a strange dream, and I don't believe at all any account men give of it.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I once found a kernel of corn in the middle of a deep wood by Walden, tucked in behind a lichen on a pine, about as high as my head, either by a crow or a squirrel. It was a mile at least from any corn-field.
Henry David Thoreau