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We cannot see anything until we are possessed with the idea of it, take it into our heads,--and then we can hardly see anything else.
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
Observation
Idea
Experience
Else
Cannot
Anything
Possessed
Ideas
Heads
Take
Hardly
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
It is strange to talk of miracles, revelations, inspiration, and the like, as things past, while love remains.
Henry David Thoreau
The community has no bribe that will tempt a wise man.
Henry David Thoreau
The kind uncles and aunts of the race are more esteemed than its true spiritual fathers and mothers.
Henry David Thoreau
The words of some men are thrown forcibly against you and adhere like burrs.
Henry David Thoreau
I am no more lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden Pond itself. What company has that lonely lake,I pray?
Henry David Thoreau
I have travelled a good deal in Concord.
Henry David Thoreau
The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.
Henry David Thoreau
Men go to a fire for entertainment. When I see how eagerly men will run to a fire, whether in warm or in cold weather, by day or by night, dragging an engine at their heels, I'm astonished to perceive how good a purpose the level of excitement is made to serve.
Henry David Thoreau
My vicinity affords many good walks and though for so many years I have walked almost every day, and sometimes for several days together, I have not yet exhausted them. An absolutely new prospect is a great happiness, and I can still get this any afternoon. Two or three hours' walking will carry me to as strange a country as I ever expect to see.
Henry David Thoreau
The murmurs of many a famous river on the other side of the globe reach even to us here, as to more distant dwellers on its banksmany a poet's stream, floating the helms and shields of heroes on its bosom.
Henry David Thoreau
We need the tonic of the wilderness, to wade sometimes in the marsh where the bitten and the meadow hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.
Henry David Thoreau
On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world.
Henry David Thoreau
The knowledge of an unlearned man is living and luxuriant like a forest, but covered with mosses and lichens and for the most part inaccessible and going to waste the knowledge of the man of science is like timber collected in yards for public works, which still supports a green sprout here and there, but even this is liable to dry rot.
Henry David Thoreau
Many college text-books, which were a weariness and stumbling-block when I studied, I have since read a little with pleasure and profit.
Henry David Thoreau
The chief want, in every state that I have been into, was a high and earnest purpose in its inhabitants.
Henry David Thoreau
The doctors are all agreed that I am suffering for want of society. Was never a case like it. First, I did not know that I was suffering at all. Secondly, as an Irishman might say, I had thought it was indigestion of the society I got.
Henry David Thoreau
For my part, I could easily do without the post-office. I think that there are very few important communications made through it.
Henry David Thoreau
I did not know that we had ever quarreled.
Henry David Thoreau
Live free, child of the mist,- and with respect to knowledge we are allchildren of the mist.
Henry David Thoreau
The only fruit which even much living yields seems to be often only some trivial success,--the ability to do some slight thing better. We make conquest only of husks and shells for the most part,--at least apparently,--but sometimes these are cinnamon and spices, you know.
Henry David Thoreau
