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Art may varnish and gild, but it can do no more.

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
May
Gild
Varnish
Art

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Undoubtedly, in the most brilliant successes, the first rank is always sacrificed.
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It is a great art to saunter !
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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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Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage.
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Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.
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Why should we leave it to Harper & Brothers and Redding & Co. to select our reading?
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The man who takes the liberty to live is superior to all the laws, by virtue of his relation to the lawmaker.
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What right have I to grieve, who have not ceased to wonder?
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A man can suffocate on courtesy.
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I could lecture on dry oak leaves I could, but who would hear me? If I were to try it on any large audience, I fear it would be no gain to them, and a positive loss to me. I should have behaved rudely toward my rustling friends.
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We slander the hyena man is the fiercest and cruelest animal.
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If we live in the Nineteenth Century, why should we not enjoy the advantages which the Nineteenth Century offers? Why should our life be in any respect provincial?
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It is remarkable that almost all speakers and writers feel it to be incumbent on them, sooner or later, to prove or acknowledge the personality of God. Some Earl of Bridgewater, thinking it better late than never, has provided for it in his will. It is a sad mistake.
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It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious.
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Somehow strangely the vice of men gets well represented and protected but their virtue has none to plead its cause - nor any charter of immunities and rights.
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In wildness is the preservation of the world.
Henry David Thoreau
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Nearest to all things is that power which fashions their being. Next to us the grandest laws are constantly being executed. Next to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are.
Henry David Thoreau
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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.
Henry David Thoreau
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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.
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Surely the writer is to address a world of laborers, and such therefore must be his own discipline.
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