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You speak of poverty and dependence. Who are poor and dependent? Who are rich and independent? When was it that men agreed to respect the appearance and not the reality?

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
Poor
Dependence
Speak
Dependent
Reality
Independence
Appearance
Truth
Independent
Men
Poverty
Respect
Rich
Agreed

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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.
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Many of the phenomena of Winter are suggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We are accustomed to hear this king described as a rude and boisterous tyrant but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of Summer.
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Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.
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You may raise enough money to tunnel a mountain, but you cannot raise money enough to hire a man who is minding his own business.
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Whose are the truly labored sentences? From the weak and flimsy periods of the politician and literary man, we are glad to turn even to the description of work, the simple record of the month's labor in the farmer's almanac, to restore our tone and spirits.
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It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however, ancient, can be trusted without proof. ... Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.
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Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. Why, nature is but another name for health.
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Man makes very much such a nest for his domestic animals, of withered grass and fodder, as the squirrels and many other wild creatures do for themselves.
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Sell your clothes- keep your thoughts.
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A man cannot wheedle nor overawe his Genius. It requires to be conciliated by nobler conduct than the world demands or can appreciate.
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In some pictures of Provincetown the persons of the inhabitants are not drawn below the ankles, so much being supposed to be buried in the sand.
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The mason asks but a narrow shelf to spring his brick from man requires only an infinitely narrower one to spring his arch of faith from.
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It is equally impossible to forget our Friends, and to make them answer to our ideal. When they say farewell, then indeed we beginto keep them company. How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual Friends, that we may go and meet their ideal cousins.
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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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Many college text-books, which were a weariness and stumbling-block when I studied, I have since read a little with pleasure and profit.
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There is one thought for the field, another for the house. I would have my thoughts, like wild apples, to be food for walkers, and will not warrant them to be palatable if tasted in the house.
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Nature is fair in proportion as the youth is pure. The heavens and the earth are one flower the earth is the calyx, the heavens the corolla.
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I never yet knew the sun to be knocked down and rolled through a mud-puddle he comes out honor-bright from behind every storm. Let us then take sides with the sun, seeing we have so much leisure.
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As a true patriot, I should be ashamed to think that Adam in paradise was more favorably situated on the whole than the backwoodsman in this country.
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What the first philosopher taught the last will have to repeat.
Henry David Thoreau