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It is impossible to give a soldier a good education without making him a deserter. His natural foe is the government that drills him.
Henry David Thoreau
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Henry David Thoreau
Age: 44 †
Born: 1817
Born: July 12
Died: 1862
Died: May 6
Abolitionist
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Autobiographer
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Ecologist
Environmentalist
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
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More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
One piece of good sense would be more memorable than a monument as high as the moon.
Henry David Thoreau
It is possible to invent a house still more convenient and luxurious than we have...but shall we always study to obtain more of these things, and not sometimes to be content with less?
Henry David Thoreau
The philanthropist too often surrounds mankind with the remembrance of his own cast- off griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy. We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease, and take care that this does not spread by contagion.
Henry David Thoreau
When will the world learn that a million men are of no importance compared with one man?
Henry David Thoreau
I fear that we are such gods or demigods only as fauns and satyrs, the divine allied to beasts, the creatures of appetite, and that, to some extent, our very life is our disgrace.
Henry David Thoreau
A man is wise with the wisdom of his time only, and ignorant with its ignorance.
Henry David Thoreau
I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality.
Henry David Thoreau
Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.
Henry David Thoreau
Nowadays almost all man's improvements, so called, as the building of houses and the cutting down of the forest and of all large trees, simply deform the landscape, and make it more and more tame and cheap.
Henry David Thoreau
I am a good horse to travel, but not from choice a roadster. The landscape-painter uses the figures of men to mark a road. He would not make that use of my figure.
Henry David Thoreau
All misfortune is but a stepping stone to fortune.
Henry David Thoreau
All men are really most attracted by the beauty of plain speech, and they even write in a florid style in imitation of this. Theyprefer to be misunderstood rather than to come short of its exuberance.
Henry David Thoreau
O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it, for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment.
Henry David Thoreau
We bless and curse ourselves.
Henry David Thoreau
What would we not give for some great poem to read now, which would be in harmony with the scenery,--for if men read aright, methinks they would never read anything but poems. No history nor philosophy can supply their place.
Henry David Thoreau
I was awakened at midnight by some heavy, low-flying bird, probably a loon, flapping by close over my head, along the shore. So, turning the other side of my half-clad body to the fire, I sought slumber again.
Henry David Thoreau
One cannot too soon forget his errors and misdemeanors for to dwell long upon them is to add to the offense, and repentance and sorrow can only be displaced by somewhat better, and which is as free and original as if they had not been.
Henry David Thoreau
Somehow strangely the vice of men gets well represented and protected but their virtue has none to plead its cause - nor any charter of immunities and rights.
Henry David Thoreau
Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buries itself alive.
Henry David Thoreau
There may be an excess of cultivation as well as of anything else, until civilization becomes pathetic. A highly cultivated man,--all whose bones can be bent! whose heaven-born virtues are but good manners!
Henry David Thoreau
