Quote

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

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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
Injustice
Machines
Wear
Necessary
Perchance
Part
Friction
Government
Disobedience
Smooth
Machine

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Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.
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I am never rich in money, and I am never meanly poor.
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When we come down into the distant village, visible from the mountain-top, the nobler inhabitants with whom we peopled it have departed, and left only vermin in its desolate streets. It is the imagination of poets which puts those brave speeches into the mouths of their heroes.
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Endeavor to live the life you have imagined.
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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.
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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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The man who thrusts his manners upon me does as if he were to insist on introducing me to his cabinet of curiosities, when I wished to see himself.
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The golden mean in ethics, as in physics, is the centre of the system and that about which all revolve, and though to a distant and plodding planet it be an uttermost extreme, yet one day, when that planet's year is completed, it will be found to be central.
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It is an unfortunate discovery certainly, that of a law which binds us where we did not know before that we were bound.
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I look upon England today as an old gentleman who is travelling with a great deal of baggage, trumpery which has accumulated fromlong housekeeping, which he has not the courage to burn.
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Each humblest plant, or weed, as we call it, stands there to express some thought or mood of ours and yet how long it stands in vain!... Beauty and true wealth are always thus cheap and despised.
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The body can feed the body only.
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Instead of water we got here a draught of beer, a lumberer's drink, which would acclimate and naturalize a man at once,-which would make him see green, and, if he slept, dream that he heard the wind sough among the pines.
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It would surpass the powers of a well man nowadays to take up his bed and walk, and I should certainly advise a sick one to lay down his bed and run.
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The United States have a coffle of four millions of slaves. They are determined to keep them in this condition and Massachusettsis one of the confederated overseers to prevent their escape.
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Instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them.
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Thank God, they cannot cut down the clouds!
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They who are continually shocked by slavery have some right to be shocked by the violent death of the slaveholder, but no others.Such will be more shocked by his life than by his death.
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If I choose to devote myself to certain labors which yield more real profit, though but little money, they may be inclined to look on me as an idler.
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We go on dating from Cold Fridays and Great Snows but a little colder Friday, or greater snow would put a period to man's existence on the globe.
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