Quote

If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself. Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

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
Money
Truth
Give
Explain
Giving
Six
Years
Fame
Love
Year
Rather
Understand

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Image
The fact which interests us most is the life of the naturalist. The purest science is still biographical. Nothing will dignify and elevate science while it is sundered so wholly from the moral life of its devotee.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Being a teacher is like being in jail once it's on your record, you can never get rid of it.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old return to them. Things do not change we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however, ancient, can be trusted without proof. ... Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Things don't change. We change.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The improved means to the unimproved end.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
At least let us have healthy books.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
How can you expect the birds to sing when their groves are cut down?
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Some creatures are made to see in the dark.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
He who cuts down woods beyond a certain limit exterminates birds.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
We slander the hyena man is the fiercest and cruelest animal.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Be resolutely and faithfully what you are be humbly what you aspire to be.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The finest manners in the world are awkwardness and fatuity when contrasted with a finer intelligence. They appear but as the fashions of past days,--mere courtliness, knee-buckles and small- clothes, out of date.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The repugnance to animal food is not the effect of experience, but is an instinct. It appeared more beautiful to live low and farehard in many respects and though I never did so, I went far enough to please my imagination.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Spring. March fans it, April christens it, and May puts on its jacket and trousers.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I do not speak to those who are well employed, in whatever circumstances, and they know whether they are well employed or not but mainly to the mass of men who are discontented, and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they might improve them.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
As I love nature, as I love singing birds...I love thee, my friend.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
When I go into a museum and see the mummies wrapped in their linen bandages, I see that the lives of men began to need reform as long ago as when they walked the earth. I come out into the streets, and meet men who declare that the time is near at hand for the redemption of the race. But as men lived in Thebes, so do they live in Dunstable today.
Henry David Thoreau