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It is true, we are such poor navigators that our thoughts, for the most part, stand off and on upon a harborless coast, are conversant only with the bights of the bays of poesy, or steer for the public ports of entry, and go into the dry docks of science, where they merely refit for this world, and no natural currents concur to individualize them.

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
World
Knowledge
Dry
Concur
Poor
Coast
Ports
Upon
Thoughtful
Docks
Natural
Currents
Steer
Individualize
Science
Merely
Steers
Bays
True
Thoughts
Port
Poesy
Part
Stand
Entry
Conversant
Thinking
Public
Conformity
Navigators

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When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable.
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The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.
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We are made happy when reason can discover no occasion for it. The memory of some past moments is more persuasive than the experience of present ones. There have been visions of such breadth and brightness that these motes were invisible in their light.
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Always the laws of light are the same, but the modes and degrees of seeing vary.
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Instead of water we got here a draught of beer, a lumberer's drink, which would acclimate and naturalize a man at once,-which would make him see green, and, if he slept, dream that he heard the wind sough among the pines.
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Our circumstances answer to our expectations and the demand of our natures.
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Friendship takes place between those who have an affinity for one another, and is a perfectly natural and inevitable result. No professions nor advances will avail.... It is a drama in which the parties have no part to act.
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The perception of beauty is a moral test.
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There is no remedy for love but to love more.
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It requires a direct dispensation from Heaven to become a walker.
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I thought, as I have my living to get, and have not eaten today, that I might go a- fishing. That's the true industry for poets. It is the only trade I have learned.
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What is wanted is men of principle, who recognize a higher law than the decision of the majority. The marines and the militia whose bodies were used lately were not men of sense nor of principle in a high moral sense they were not men at all.
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The murmurs of many a famous river on the other side of the globe reach even to us here, as to more distant dwellers on its banksmany a poet's stream, floating the helms and shields of heroes on its bosom.
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There is always room and occasion enough for a true book on any subject as there is room for more light the brightest day and more rays will not interfere with the first.
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They were pleasant spring days, in which the winter of man's discontent was thawing as well as the earth, and the life that had lain torpid began to stretch itself.
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Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.
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An efficient and valuable man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not. The inefficient offer their inefficiency to the highest bidder, and are forever expecting to be put into office. One would suppose that they were rarely disappointed.
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I did not know that mankind was suffering for want of gold.
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Things don't change. We change.
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It is not in vain that man speaks to man. This is the value of literature.
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