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Letter-writing too often degenerates into a communicating of facts, and not of truths of other men's deeds and not our thoughts.What are the convulsions of a planet, compared with the emotions of the soul? or the rising of a thousand suns, if that is not enlightened by a ray?

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
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Ecologist
Environmentalist
Essayist
Naturalist
Philosopher
Poet
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
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Henry D. Thoreau
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Degenerates
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More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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Even Nature is observed to have her playful moods or aspects, of which man sometimes seems to be the sport.
Henry David Thoreau
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The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles! What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment!
Henry David Thoreau
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The question is not what you look at – but how you look & whether you see.
Henry David Thoreau
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There are secret articles in our treaties with the gods, of more importance than all the rest, which the historian can never know.
Henry David Thoreau
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Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently appreciated by mankind.
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A journal, is a book that shall contain a record of all your joy, your ecstasy, what you are grateful for.
Henry David Thoreau
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But perhaps a man is not required to bury himself.
Henry David Thoreau
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It is the marriage of the soul with nature that makes the intellect fruitful, and gives birth to imagination
Henry David Thoreau
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This life is not for complaint, but for satisfaction.
Henry David Thoreau
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Time is like a handful of sand - the tighter you grasp it, the faster it runs through your fingers.
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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At least let us have healthy books.
Henry David Thoreau
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Beside some philosophers of larger vision, Carlyle stands like an honest, half-despairing boy, grasping at some details only of their world systems.
Henry David Thoreau
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I make it my business to extract from Nature what ever nutriment she can furnish me.... I milk the sky and the earth.
Henry David Thoreau
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I think of no news to tell you. It is a serene summer day here, all above the snow. The hens steal their nests, and I steal theireggs still, as formerly. This is what I do with the hands. Ah, labor,--it is a divine institution, and conversation with many men and hens.
Henry David Thoreau
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The body can feed the body only.
Henry David Thoreau
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At the extreme north, the voyagers are obliged to dance and act plays for employment.
Henry David Thoreau
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The front aspect of great thoughts can only be enjoyed by those who stand on the side whence they arrive.
Henry David Thoreau
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A temple, you know, was anciently an open place without a roof, whose walls served merely to shut out the world and direct the mind toward heaven but a modern meeting-house shuts out the heavens, while it crowds the world into still closer quarters.
Henry David Thoreau
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I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one.
Henry David Thoreau