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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

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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
Water
Reflected
Twigs
Art
Required
Rudeness
Nature
Mirror
Exaggerate
May
Boat
Faithfully
Every
Grass
Disturb
Like
Mirrors
Blade
Surface
Imitate
Indeed
Blades
Twig

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The universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to discuss the characters of individuals.
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At death our friends and relatives either draw nearer to us and are found out, or depart farther from us and are forgotten. Friends are as often brought nearer together as separated by death.
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I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere.
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I live in the angle of a leaden wall, into whose composition was poured a little alloy of bell-metal. Often, in the repose of my mid-day, there reaches my ears a confused tintinnabulum from without. It is the noise of my contemporaries.
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I sometimes despair of getting anything quite simple and honest done in this world by the help of men. They would have to be passed through a powerful press first, to squeeze their old notions out of them, so that they would not soon get upon their legs again.
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However mean your life is, meet it and live it do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house.
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There is such a thing as caste, even in the West but it is comparatively faint it is conservatism here. It says, forsake not your calling, outrage no institution, use no violence, rend no bonds the State is thy parent. Its virtue or manhood is wholly filial.
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Where is the unexplored land but in our own untried enterprises? To an adventurous spirit any place--London, New York, Worcester, or his own yard--is unexplored land, to seek which Frémont and Kane travel so far. To a sluggish and defeated spirit even the Great Basin and the Polaris are trivial places.
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A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority it is not even a minority then but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.
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Nations are possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave. What if equal pains were taken to smooth and polish their manners?
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One who knew how to appropriate the true value of this world would be the poorest man in it. The poor rich man! all he has is whathe has bought.
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How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.
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We are superior to the joy we experience.
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Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.
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I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks.
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In the unbending of the arm to do the deed there is experience worth all the maxims in the world.
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Our thoughts are epochs in our lives all else is but as a journal of the winds that blow while we are here.
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The inhabitants of earth behold commonly but the dark and shadowy under side of heaven's pavement it is only when seen at a favorable angle in the horizon, morning or evening, that some faint streaks of the rich lining of the clouds are revealed.
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In accumulating property for ourselves or our posterity, in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even, we are mortal but in dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change nor accident.
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Man is but the place where I stand.
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