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We are apt to imagine that this hubbub of Philosophy, Literature, and Religion, which is heard in pulpits, lyceums, and parlors, vibrates through the universe, and is as catholic a sound as the creaking of the earth's axle. But if a man sleeps soundly, he will forget it all between sunset and dawn.

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
Catholic
Vibrates
Religion
Philosophy
Soundly
Universe
Imagine
Parlor
Earth
Sleep
Vibrate
Axle
Men
Heard
Sleeps
Hubbub
Pulpit
Parlors
Literature
Sunset
Pulpits
Forget
Dawn
Creaking
Sound

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I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home. I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful.
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Art can never match the luxury and superfluity of Nature. In the former all is seen it cannot afford concealed wealth, and is niggardly in comparison but Nature, even when she is scant and thin outwardly, satisfies us still by the assurance of a certain generosity at the roots.
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Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows.
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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.
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Some, it seems to me, elect their rulers for their crookedness. But I think that a straight stick makes the best cane, and an upright man the best ruler.
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The researcher is more memorable than the researched.
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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.
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Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure.
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Let every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made.
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I do not know where to find in any literature, whether ancient or modern, any adequate account of that Nature with which I am acquainted.
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Men seem anxious to accomplish an orderly retreat through the centuries, earnestly rebuilding the works behind them, as they are battered down by the encroachments of time but while they loiter, they and their works both fall prey to the arch enemy.
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Fire is the most tolerable third party
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Always the laws of light are the same, but the modes and degrees of seeing vary.
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Truth never turns to rebuke falsehood her own straightforwardness is the severest correction.
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A fortified town is like a man cased in the heavy armor of antiquity, with a horse-load of broadswords and small arms slung to him, endeavoring to go about his business.
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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.
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It is only necessary that man should start a fence that Nature should carry it on and complete it. The farmer cannot plow quite up to the rails or wall which he himself has placed, and hence it often becomes a hedgerow and sometimes a coppice.
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It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are... than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.
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Sometimes we are clarified and calmed healthily, as we never were before in our lives, not by an opiate, but by some unconscious obedience to the all-just laws, so that we become like a still lake of purest crystal and without an effort our depths are revealed to ourselves. . . .
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Blessed are they who never read a newspaper, for they shall see Nature, and through her, God.
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