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Homeliness is almost as great a merit in a book as in a house, if the reader would abide there. It is next to beauty, and a very high art.
Henry David Thoreau
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Henry David Thoreau
Age: 44 †
Born: 1817
Born: July 12
Died: 1862
Died: May 6
Abolitionist
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
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Henry D. Thoreau
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More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
Simplicity is the law of Nature for man as well as for flowers. When the tapestry (corolla) of the nuptial bed (calyx) is excessive, luxuriant, it is unproductive. The fertile flowers are single, not double.
Henry David Thoreau
Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.
Henry David Thoreau
It must be confessed that horses at present work too exclusively for men, rarely men for horses and the brute degenerates in man's society.
Henry David Thoreau
Nature is an admirable schoolmistress.
Henry David Thoreau
In the love of narrow souls I make many short voyages but in vain-I find no sea room-but in great souls I sail before the wind without a watch, and never reach the shore.
Henry David Thoreau
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.
Henry David Thoreau
If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.
Henry David Thoreau
I knew that the wall was the main thing in Quebec, and had cost a great deal of money.... In fact, these are the only remarkable walls we have in North America, though we have a good deal of Virginia fence, it is true.
Henry David Thoreau
Simplicity is the peak of civilization.
Henry David Thoreau
I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we mingle with the herd of common men.
Henry David Thoreau
The knowledge of an unlearned man is living and luxuriant like a forest, but covered with mosses and lichens and for the most part inaccessible and going to waste the knowledge of the man of science is like timber collected in yards for public works, which still supports a green sprout here and there, but even this is liable to dry rot.
Henry David Thoreau
The greatest tragedy in life is to spend your whole life fishing only to discover it was never fish that you were after.
Henry David Thoreau
Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now.
Henry David Thoreau
As for the complex ways of living, I love them not, however much I practice them. In as many places as possible, I will get my feet down to the earth.
Henry David Thoreau
I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and threw them out the window in disgust.
Henry David Thoreau
The books for young people say a great deal about the selection of Friends it is because they really have nothing to say about Friends. They mean associates and confidants merely.
Henry David Thoreau
To regret deeply is to live afresh.
Henry David Thoreau
There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature and has his senses still.
Henry David Thoreau
Law never made men a whit more just.
Henry David Thoreau
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