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If all were as it seems, and men made the elements their servants for noble ends!
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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Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Made
Servant
Men
Noble
Elements
Science
Facts
Ends
Truth
Seems
Servants
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
The man who does not betake himself at once and desperately to sawing is called a loafer, though he may be knocking at the doors of heaven all the while.
Henry David Thoreau
To be awake is to be alive.
Henry David Thoreau
All fables, indeed, have their morals but the innocent enjoy the story.
Henry David Thoreau
While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.
Henry David Thoreau
How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.
Henry David Thoreau
I look upon England today as an old gentleman who is travelling with a great deal of baggage, trumpery which has accumulated fromlong housekeeping, which he has not the courage to burn.
Henry David Thoreau
The chief want, in every state that I have been into, was a high and earnest purpose in its inhabitants.
Henry David Thoreau
The prosaic man sees things badly, or with the bodily sense but the poet sees them clad in beauty, with the spiritual sense.
Henry David Thoreau
I should say that the useful results of science had accumulated, but that there had been no accumulation of knowledge, strictly speaking, for posterity for knowledge is to be acquired only by a corresponding experience. How can we know what we are told merely? Each man can interpret another's experience only by his own.
Henry David Thoreau
If you indulge in long periods, you must be sure to have a snapper at the end.
Henry David Thoreau
You will pardon some obscurities, for there are more secrets in my trade than in most men's, and yet not voluntarily kept, but inseparable from its very nature. I would gladly tell all that I know about it, and never paint No Admittance on my gate.
Henry David Thoreau
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
Some creatures are made to see in the dark.
Henry David Thoreau
The ears were made, not for such trivial uses as men are wont to suppose, but to hear celestial sounds.
Henry David Thoreau
The mass never comes up to the standard of its best member, but on the contrary degrades itself to a level with the lowest.
Henry David Thoreau
A man will not need to study history to find out what is best for his own culture.
Henry David Thoreau
The words of some men are thrown forcibly against you and adhere like burrs.
Henry David Thoreau
I am a good horse to travel, but not from choice a roadster. The landscape-painter uses the figures of men to mark a road. He would not make that use of my figure.
Henry David Thoreau
Indeed, the Englishman's history of New England commences only when it ceases to be New France.
Henry David Thoreau
You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land there is no other life but this.
Henry David Thoreau
