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The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality.

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
Values
Soon
Reality
Exist
Truth
Highest
Come
Progress
Greatest
Farthest
Doubt
Appreciated
Knowledge
Gains
Forget
Easily

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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In Homer and Chaucer there is more of the innocence and serenity of youth than in the more modern and moral poets. The Iliad is not Sabbath but morning reading, and men cling to this old song, because they still have moments of unbaptized and uncommitted life, which give them an appetite for more.
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I should say that the useful results of science had accumulated, but that there had been no accumulation of knowledge, strictly speaking, for posterity for knowledge is to be acquired only by a corresponding experience. How can we know what we are told merely? Each man can interpret another's experience only by his own.
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A man of fine perceptions is more truly feminine than a merely sentimental woman.
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The heart is forever inexperienced.
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The pleasures of the intellect are permanent, the pleasures of the heart are transitory.
Henry David Thoreau
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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.
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By what a delicate and far-stretched contribution every island is made! What an enterprise of nature thus to lay the foundations of and to build up the future continent, of golden and silver sands and the ruins of forests, with ant-like industry.
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If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.
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A man is wise with the wisdom of his time only, and ignorant with its ignorance.
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The savage lives simply through ignorance and idleness or laziness, but the philosopher lives simply through wisdom.
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The highest condition of art is artlessness.
Henry David Thoreau
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I am struck by the fact that the more slowly trees grow at first, the sounder they are at the core, and I think that the same is true of human beings.
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Lose the world, get lost in it, and find your soul.
Henry David Thoreau
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As a preacher, I should be prompted to tell men, not so much how to get their wheat bread cheaper, as of the bread of life compared with which that is bran. Let a man only taste these loaves, and he becomes a skillful economist at once.
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The greatest and saddest defect is not credulity, but an habitual forgetfulness that our science is ignorance.
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I seem to have dodged all my days with one or two persons, and lived upon expectation,--as if the bud would surely blossom and soI am content to live.
Henry David Thoreau
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Nature, even when she is scant and thin outwardly, satisfies us still by the assurance of a certain generosity at the roots.
Henry David Thoreau
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In the unbending of the arm to do the deed there is experience worth all the maxims in the world.
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Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.
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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.
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