Quote

When one man has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to his understanding, I foresee that all men will at length establish their lives on that basis.

Henry David Thoreau

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Imagination
Understanding
Transcendentalism
Fact
Foresee
Lives
Reduced
Facts
Establish
Men
Length
Basis
Bases

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Image
Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
We make needless ado about capital punishment,--taking lives, when there is no life to take.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Politics is but a narrow field.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment to toe that line.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
All sensuality is one, though it takes many forms all purity is one. It is the same whether a man eat, or drink, or cohabit, or sleep sensually. They are but one appetite, and we only need to see a person do any one of these things to know how great a sensualist he is. The impure can neither stand nor sit with purity.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The whole tree itself is but one leaf, and rivers are still vaster leaves whose pulp is intervening earth, and towns and cities are the ova of insects in their axils.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
It required some rudeness to disturb with our boat the mirror-like surface of the water, in which every twig and blade of grass was so faithfully reflected too faithfully indeed for art to imitate, for only Nature may exaggerate herself.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I fear that he who walks over these fields a century hence will not know the pleasure of knocking off wild apples. Ah, poor man, there are many pleasures which he will not know!
Henry David Thoreau
Image
What is religion? That which is never spoken.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I have much to learn of the Indian, nothing of the missionary.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Real power is measured by how much you can let things be.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
God is alone,-but the devil, he is far from being alone he sees a great deal of company he is legion.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The works of great poets have never been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
In Adam's fall We sinned all. In the new Adam's rise, We shall all reach the skies.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Dreams are the touchstones of our character.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I knew that the wall was the main thing in Quebec, and had cost a great deal of money.... In fact, these are the only remarkable walls we have in North America, though we have a good deal of Virginia fence, it is true.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
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
Image
The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.
Henry David Thoreau