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However much we admire the orator's occasional bursts of eloquence, the noblest written words are commonly as far behind or abovethe fleeting spoken language as the firmament with its stars is behind the clouds.

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
Written
Occasional
Stars
Fleeting
Orator
Words
Spoken
Bursts
Language
Admire
Orators
Much
Clouds
Firmament
However
Noblest
Behinds
Commonly
Behind
Eloquence

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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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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What lies before us and what lies behind us are small matters compared to what lies within us. And when we bring what is within out into the world, miracles happen.
Henry David Thoreau
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How can any man be weak who dares to be at all?
Henry David Thoreau
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Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have. ... Shall we always study to obtain more, and not sometimes be content with less?
Henry David Thoreau
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Books are for the most part willfully and hastily written, as parts of a system to supply a want real or imagined.
Henry David Thoreau
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Most men would feel shame if caught preparing with their own hands precisely such a dinner, whether of animal or vegetable food, as is every day prepared for them by others. Yet till this is otherwise we are not civilized, and, if gentlemen and ladies, are not true men and women. This certainly suggests what change is to be made.
Henry David Thoreau
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Some do not walk at all others walk in the highways a few walk across lots. Roads are made for horses and men of business. I do not travel in them much, comparatively, because I am not in a hurry to get to any tavern or grocery or livery-stable or depot to which they lead.
Henry David Thoreau
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To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.
Henry David Thoreau
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Live free, child of the mist,- and with respect to knowledge we are allchildren of the mist.
Henry David Thoreau
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Farmers are respectable and interesting to me in proportion as they are poor.
Henry David Thoreau
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The hawk is aerial brother of the wave which he sails over and surveys, those his perfect air-inflated wings answering to the elemental unfledged pinions of the sea.
Henry David Thoreau
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If Columbus was the first to discover the islands, Americus Vespucius and Cabot, and the Puritans, and we their descendants, havediscovered only the shores of America.
Henry David Thoreau
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If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.
Henry David Thoreau
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If you will not try, you will go to your grave with your song still inside you.
Henry David Thoreau
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I wish to learn what life has to teach, and not, when I come to die, discover that I have not truly lived.
Henry David Thoreau
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We are a nation of politicians, concerned about the outmost defenses only of freedom. It is our children's children who may perchance be really free.
Henry David Thoreau
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A journal is a repository for all those fragmentary ideas and odd scraps of information that might otherwise be lost and which some day might lead to more harmonious compositions.
Henry David Thoreau
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The student who secures his coveted leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisure fruitful.
Henry David Thoreau
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Eastward I go only by force but westward I go free.
Henry David Thoreau
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It is remarkable that there are few men so well employed, so much to their minds, but that a little money or fame would commonly buy them off from their present pursuit.
Henry David Thoreau