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All that are printed and bound are not books they do not necessarily belong to letters, but are oftener to be ranked with the other luxuries and appendages of civilized life. Base wares are palmed off under a thousand disguises.

Henry David Thoreau

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Henry David Thoreau
Age: 44 †
Born: 1817
Born: July 12
Died: 1862
Died: May 6
Abolitionist
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Autobiographer
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Ecologist
Environmentalist
Essayist
Naturalist
Philosopher
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
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Necessarily
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More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.
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The Ethiopian cannot change his skin nor the leopard his spots.
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Do not despair of life. You have no doubt force enough to overcome your obstacles. Think of the fox prowling through wood and field in a winter night for something to satisfy his hunger. Notwithstanding cold and the hounds and traps, his race survives. I do not believe any of them ever committed suicide.
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I love man-kind, but I hate the institutions of the dead unkind. Men execute nothing so faithfully as the wills of the dead, to the last codicil and letter. They rule this world, and the living are but their executors. Such foundation too have our lectures and our sermons, commonly.
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I don't like the city better, the more I see it, but worse. I am ashamed of my eyes that behold it. It is a thousand times meanerthan I could have imagined.... The pigs in the street are the most respectable part of the population.
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I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.
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Endeavor to live the life you have imagined.
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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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Why look in the dark for light?
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The Indian...stands free and unconstrained in Nature, is her inhabitant and not her guest, and wears her easily and gracefully. But the civilized man has the habits of the house. His house is a prison.
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Give me the old familiar world, post-office and all, with this ever new self, with this infinite expectation and faith, which does not know when it is beaten.
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What right have I to grieve, who have not ceased to wonder?
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You boast of spending a tenth part of your income in charity may be you should spend the nine tenths so, and done with it.
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Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.
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It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious.
Henry David Thoreau
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If however the law is so promulgated that it of necessity makes you an agent of injustices against another, then I say to you ... break the law.
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Removing the weeds, putting fresh soil about the bean stems, and encouraging this weed which I had sown, making the yellow soil express its summer thought in bean leaves and blossoms rather than in wormwood and piper and millet grass, making the earth say beans instead of grass, - this was my daily work.
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The voice of nature is always encouraging.
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When I go out of the house for a walk, uncertain as yet whither I will bend my steps, [I] submit myself to my instinct to decide for me.
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Nature abhors a vacuum, and if I can only walk with sufficient carelessness I am sure to be filled.
Henry David Thoreau