Quote

I fear that we are such gods or demigods only as fauns and satyrs, the divine allied to beasts, the creatures of appetite, and that, to some extent, our very life is our disgrace.

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
Divine
Allied
Fear
Beasts
Life
Disgrace
Appetite
Beast
Extent
Gods
Satyrs
Creatures
Demigods

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Image
The man who thrusts his manners upon me does as if he were to insist on introducing me to his cabinet of curiosities, when I wished to see himself.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
How rarely I meet with a man who can be free, even in thought! We all live according to rule. Some men are bedridden all world-ridden.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Time is like a handful of sand - the tighter you grasp it, the faster it runs through your fingers.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
By what a delicate and far-stretched contribution every island is made! What an enterprise of nature thus to lay the foundations of and to build up the future continent, of golden and silver sands and the ruins of forests, with ant-like industry.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
We cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun he is no more humane, while his education has been sadly neglected.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
At the extreme north, the voyagers are obliged to dance and act plays for employment.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
All sound heard at the greatest possible distance produces one and the same effect, a vibration of the universal lyre, just as the intervening atmosphere makes a distant ridge of earth interesting to our eyes by the azure tint it imparts to it.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Be it life or death, we crave only reality.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I think it would be worth the while to introduce a school of children to such [an oak grove], that they may get an idea of the primitive oaks before they are all gone, instead of hiring botanists to lecture to them when it is too late.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Let your capital be simplicity and contentment.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
We hate the kindness which we understand.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I lose my respect for the man who can make the mystery of sex the subject of a coarse jest, yet when you speak earnestly and seriously on the subject, is silent.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
To the sick, indeed, nature is sick, but to the well, a fountain of health.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite - only a sense of existence. Well, anything for variety.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Who looks in the sun will see no light else but also he will see no shadow. Our life revolves unceasingly, but the centre is ever the same, and the wise will regard only the seasons of the soul.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
In literature it is only the wild that attracts us.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
So near along life's stream are the fountains of innocence and youth making fertile its sandy margin and the voyageur will do well to replenish his vessels often at these uncontaminated sources.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
In their daily life, all are braver than they know.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
A fortified town is like a man cased in the heavy armor of antiquity, with a horse-load of broadswords and small arms slung to him, endeavoring to go about his business.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
My eye is educated to discover anything on the ground, as chestnuts, etc. It is probably wholesomer to look at the ground much than at the heavens.
Henry David Thoreau