Quote

The squeaking of the pump sounds as necessary as the music of the spheres.

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
Unity
Sounds
Necessary
Sound
Music
Squeaking
Pump
Pumps
Spheres

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Image
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
Image
I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Yet we must try the harder, the less the prospect of success.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
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.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
If the tax-gatherer, or any other public officer, asks me, as one has done, But what shall I do? my answer is, If you really wish to do anything, resign your office. When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
It is after we get home that we really go over the mountain, if ever.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Fresh curls spring from the baldest brow. There is nothing inorganic.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I stand in awe of my body.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Where there is not discernment, the behavior even of the purest soul may in effect amount to coarseness.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
A man may grow rich in Turkey even, if he will be in all respects a good subject of the Turkish government.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Absolutely speaking, Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you is by no means a golden rule, but the best of current silver. An honest man would have but little occasion for it. It is golden not to have any rule at all in such a case.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I would not have every man nor every part of a man cultivated, any more than I would have every acre of earth cultivated: part will be tillage, but the greater part will be meadow and forest, not only serving an immediate use, but preparing a mould against a distant future, by the annual decay of the vegetation which it supports.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
My facts shall be falsehoods to the common sense. I would so state facts that they shall be significant, shall be myths or mythologic. Facts which the mind perceived, thoughts which the body thought - with these I deal.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Great God, I ask thee for no meaner pelf Than that I may not disappoint myself, That in my action I may soar as high As I can now discern with this clear eye.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Hear! hear! screamed the jay from a neighboring tree, where I had heard a tittering for some time, winter has a concentrated and nutty kernel, if you know where to look for it.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The New Testament is remarkable for its pure morality the best of the Hindoo Scripture, for its pure intellectuality. The readeris nowhere raised into and sustained in a higher, purer, or rarer region of thought than in the Bhagvat-Geeta.... It is unquestionably one of the noblest and most sacred scriptures which have come down to us.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Some have asked if the stock of men could not be improved,--if they could not be bred as cattle. Let Love be purified, and all therest will follow. A pure love is thus, indeed, the panacea for all the ills of the world.
Henry David Thoreau