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Much of our poetry has the very best manners, but no character.
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
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
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More quotes by 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
If I choose to devote myself to certain labors which yield more real profit, though but little money, they may be inclined to look on me as an idler.
Henry David Thoreau
Write while the heat is in you.
Henry David Thoreau
The most difficult thing to understand during conversation is silence.
Henry David Thoreau
To speak or do anything that shall concern mankind, one must speak and act as if well, or from that grain of health which he has left.
Henry David Thoreau
I do not value any view of the universe into which man and the institutions of man enter very largely and absorb much of the attention. Man is but the place where I stand, and the prospect hence is infinite.
Henry David Thoreau
No definition of poetry is adequate unless it be poetry itself. The most accurate analysis by the rarest wisdom is yet insufficient, and the poet will instantly prove it false by setting aside its requisitions. It is indeed all that we do not know.
Henry David Thoreau
On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world.
Henry David Thoreau
Where is the unexplored land but in our own untried enterprises? To an adventurous spirit any place--London, New York, Worcester, or his own yard--is unexplored land, to seek which Frémont and Kane travel so far. To a sluggish and defeated spirit even the Great Basin and the Polaris are trivial places.
Henry David Thoreau
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
I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government
Henry David Thoreau
The student may read Homer or Ãâ schylus in the Greek without danger of dissipation or luxuriousness, for it implies that hein some measure emulate their heroes, and consecrate morning hours to their pages.
Henry David Thoreau
This fond reiteration of the oldest expressions of truth by the latest posterity, content with slightly and religiously retouchingthe old material, is the most impressive proof of a common humanity.
Henry David Thoreau
The mass never comes up to the standard of its best member, but on the contrary degrades itself to a level with the lowest.
Henry David Thoreau
I do not wish, it happens, to be associated with Massachusetts, either in holding slaves or in conquering Mexico. I am a little better than herself in these respects.
Henry David Thoreau
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
Nearest to all things is that power which fashions their being. Next to us the grandest laws are constantly being executed. Next to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are.
Henry David Thoreau
Such a man has some right to fish, and I love to see nature carried out in him.
Henry David Thoreau
Farmers are respectable and interesting to me in proportion as they are poor.
Henry David Thoreau
In wildness is the preservation of the world.
Henry David Thoreau
