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Bribed with a little sunlight and a few prismatic tints, we bless our Maker, and stave off his wrath with hymns.

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
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Religion
Tints
Littles
Hymns
Little
Maker
Wrath
Sunlight
Makers
Bless
Stave
God
Bribed

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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City life is millions of people being lonesome together.
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There are continents and seas in the moral world, to which every man is an isthmus or inlet, yet unexplored by him.
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I love a life whose plot is simple.
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History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning ofthings, which natural history might with reason assume to do but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,--when did burdock and plantain sprout first?
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It is a great art to saunter !
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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.
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I am a happy camper so I guess I’m doing something right. Happiness is like a butterfly the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.
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I fear that he who walks over these fields a century hence will not know the pleasure of knocking off wild apples. Ah, poor man, there are many pleasures which he will not know!
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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.
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The Slothful do not have the time to become virtuous or despicable.
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Don't be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.
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The condition-of-England question is a practical one. The condition of England demands a hero, not a poet.
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Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buries itself alive.
Henry David Thoreau
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The rich man is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue.
Henry David Thoreau
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The fact which interests us most is the life of the naturalist. The purest science is still biographical. Nothing will dignify and elevate science while it is sundered so wholly from the moral life of its devotee.
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Did ever a man try heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no advantage in them - that it was a vain endeavor?
Henry David Thoreau
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Good for the body is the work of the body, good for the soul the work of the soul, and good for either the work of the other.
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The animal merely makes a bed, which he warms with his body, in a sheltered place but man, having discovered fire, boxes up someair in a spacious apartment, and warms that.... Thus he goes a step or two beyond instinct, and saves a little time for the fine arts.
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Undoubtedly, in the most brilliant successes, the first rank is always sacrificed.
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A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure.
Henry David Thoreau