Quote

Men talk glibly enough about moonshine, as if they knew its qualities very well, and despised them as owls might talk of sunshine,--none of your sunshine!--but this word commonly means merely something which they do not understand,--which they are abed and asleep to, however much it may be worth their while to be up and awake to it.

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
Enough
Word
Merely
Owls
Mean
Understand
None
Owl
Much
Means
Moon
Despised
Something
May
However
Commonly
Men
Ideas
Worth
Asleep
Wells
Knew
Sunshine
Abed
Might
Quality
Qualities
Glibly
Well
Talk
Awake
Moonshine

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Don't be afraid that your life will end, be afraid that it will never begin!
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What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground.
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In Homer and Chaucer there is more of the innocence and serenity of youth than in the more modern and moral poets. The Iliad is not Sabbath but morning reading, and men cling to this old song, because they still have moments of unbaptized and uncommitted life, which give them an appetite for more.
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The researcher is more memorable than the researched.
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We are all of us Apollos serving some Admetus.
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I want the flower and fruit of a man that some fragrance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse.
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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 should treat our minds, that is, ourselves, as innocent and ingenuous children, whose guardians we are, and be careful what objects and what subjects we thrust on their attention.
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I am engaged to Concord and my own private pursuits by 10,000 ties, and it would be suicide to rend them.
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It takes a man of genius to travel in his own country, in his native village to make any progress between his door and his gate.
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Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!
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This bird sees the white man come and the Indian withdraw, but it withdraws not. Its untamed voice is still heard above the tinkling of the forge... It remains to remind us of aboriginal nature.
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All these sounds, the crowing of cocks, the baying of dogs, and the hum of insects at noon, are the evidence of nature's health orsound state.
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Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old return to them. Things do not change we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society.
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And so the seasons went rolling on into summer, as one rambles into higher and higher grass.
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It is the man determines what is said, not the words.
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I walk out into a nature such as the old prophets and poets Menu, Moses, Homer, Chaucer, walked in. You may name it America, but it is not America. Neither Americus Vespucius, nor Columbus, nor the rest were the discoverers of it. There is a truer account of it in Mythology than in any history of America so called that I have seen.
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Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.
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Things don't change. We change.
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There is a slumbering subterranean fire in nature which never goes out, and which no cold can chill.
Henry David Thoreau