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I do not judge men by anything they can do. Their greatest deed is the impression they make on me.

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
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Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Anything
Make
Men
Deed
Impression
Deeds
Judge
Judging
Greatest

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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No doubt another may also think for me but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself.
Henry David Thoreau
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If Columbus was the first to discover the islands, Americus Vespucius and Cabot, and the Puritans, and we their descendants, havediscovered only the shores of America.
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There is always room and occasion enough for a true book on any subject as there is room for more light the brightest day and more rays will not interfere with the first.
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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
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After all the field of battle possesses many advantages over the drawing-room. There at least is no room for pretension or excessive ceremony, no shaking of hands or rubbing of noses, which make one doubt your sincerity, but hearty as well as hard hand-play. It at least exhibits one of the faces of humanity, the former only a mask.
Henry David Thoreau
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In society you will not find health, but in nature. Unless our feet at least stood in the midst of nature, all our faces would bepale and livid. Society is always diseased, and the best is the most so.
Henry David Thoreau
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The chickadee and nuthatch are more inspiring society than statesmen and philosophers, and we shall return to these last as to more vulgar companions.
Henry David Thoreau
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Let a man take time enough for the most trivial deed, though it be but the paring of his nails. The buds swell imperceptibly, without hurry or confusion,--as if the short spring days were an eternity.
Henry David Thoreau
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What we call wildness is a civilization other than our own.
Henry David Thoreau
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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
Henry David Thoreau
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May we so love as never to have occasion to repent of our love!
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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Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing.
Henry David Thoreau
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Furniture! Thank God, I can sit and I can stand without the aid of a furniture warehouse.
Henry David Thoreau
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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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If we were always, indeed, getting our living, and regulating our lives according to the last and best mode we had learned, we should never be troubled with ennui.
Henry David Thoreau
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This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments?
Henry David Thoreau
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God reigns when we take a liberal view, when a liberal view is presented to us.
Henry David Thoreau
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Politics is the gizzard of society, full of grit and gravel, and the two political parties are its opposite halves - sometimes split into quarters - which grind on each other. Not only individuals but states have thus a confirmed dyspepsia.
Henry David Thoreau
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Show me two villages, one embowered in trees and blazing with all the glories of October, the other a merely trivial and treelesswaste, or with only a single tree or two for suicides, and I shall be sure that in the latter will be found the most starved and bigoted religionists and the most desperate drinkers.
Henry David Thoreau