Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Without
Soldier
Giving
Impossible
Good
Education
Natural
Making
War
Deserter
Give
Drills
Government
Foe
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
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.
Henry David Thoreau
The Library is a wilderness of books.
Henry David Thoreau
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?
Henry David Thoreau
There is all the poetry in the world in a name. It is a poem which the mass of men hear and read. What is poetry in the common sense, but a hearing of such jingling names? I want nothing better than a good word. The name of a thing may easily be more than the thing itself to me.
Henry David Thoreau
If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth
Henry David Thoreau
Time & Co. are, after all, the only quite honest and trustworthy publishers that we know.
Henry David Thoreau
I do not know but it is too much to read one newspaper a week. I have tried it recently, and for so long it seems to me that I have not dwelt in my native region. The sun, the clouds, the snow, the trees say not so much to me. You cannot serve two masters.
Henry David Thoreau
It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.
Henry David Thoreau
To a small man every greater is an exaggeration.
Henry David Thoreau
I have climbed several higher mountains without guide or path, and have found, as might be expected, that it takes only more time and patience commonly than to travel the smoothest highway.
Henry David Thoreau
The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.
Henry David Thoreau
If you indulge in long periods, you must be sure to have a snapper at the end.
Henry David Thoreau
Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me.
Henry David Thoreau
Nearest to all things is that power which fashions their being. Next to us the grandest laws are constantly being executed. Next to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are.
Henry David Thoreau
Beside some philosophers of larger vision, Carlyle stands like an honest, half-despairing boy, grasping at some details only of their world systems.
Henry David Thoreau
To meet the objections of some inveterate cavillers, I may as well state, that if I dined out occasionally, as I always had done,and I trust shall have opportunities to do again, it was frequently to the detriment of my domestic arrangements.
Henry David Thoreau
This life we live is a strange dream, and I don't believe at all any account men give of it.
Henry David Thoreau
The church is a sort of hospital for men's souls and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies.
Henry David Thoreau
As far as our noblest hardwood forests are concerned, the animals, especially squirrels and jays, are our greatest and almost only benefactors. It is to them that we owe this gift. It is not in vain that the squirrels live in or about every forest tree, or hollow log, and every wall and heap of stones.
Henry David Thoreau
Open all your pores and bathe in all the tides of nature, in all her streams and oceans, at all seasons.
Henry David Thoreau
