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All great enterprises are self-supporting.

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
Great
Enterprises
Supporting
Enterprise
Independence
Labor
Self

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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The most stupendous scenery ceases to be sublime when it becomes distinct, or in other words limited, and the imagination is no longer encouraged to exaggerate it. The actual height and breadth of a mountain or a waterfall are always ridiculously small they are the imagined only that content us.
Henry David Thoreau
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Our own country furnishes antiquities as ancient and durable, and as useful, as any rocks at least as well covered with lichens,and a soil which, if it is virgin, is but virgin mould, the very dust of nature. What if we cannot read Rome or Greece, Etruria or Carthage, or Egypt or Babylon, on these are our cliffs bare?
Henry David Thoreau
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If a man were to place himself in an attitude to bear manfully the greatest evil that can be inflicted on him, he would find suddenly that there was no such evil to bear his brave back would go a-begging.
Henry David Thoreau
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What stuff is the man made of who is not coexistent in our thought with the purest and sublimest truth?
Henry David Thoreau
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True, there are architects so called in this country, and I have heard of one at least possessed with the idea of making architectural ornaments have a core of truth, a necessity, and hence a beauty, as if it were a revelation to him. All very well perhaps from his point of view, but only a little better than the common dilettantism.
Henry David Thoreau
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In the production of the necessaries of life Nature is ready enough to assist man.
Henry David Thoreau
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I am struck by the simplicity of light in the atmosphere in the autumn, as if the earth absorbed none, and out of this profusion of dazzling light came the autumnal tints.
Henry David Thoreau
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Spring. March fans it, April christens it, and May puts on its jacket and trousers.
Henry David Thoreau
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Only nature has a right to grieve perpetually, for she only is innocent. Soon the ice will melt, and the blackbirds sing along the river which he frequented, as pleasantly as ever. The same everlasting serenity will appear in this face of God, and we will not be sorrowful, if he is not.
Henry David Thoreau
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The Indian navigator naturally distinguishes by a name those parts of a stream where he has encountered quick water and forks, andagain, the lakes and smooth water where he can rest his weary arms, since those are the most interesting and more arable parts to him.
Henry David Thoreau
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Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.
Henry David Thoreau
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To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning.
Henry David Thoreau
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He is the rich man, and enjoys the fruit of his riches, who summer and winter forever can find delight in his own thoughts.
Henry David Thoreau
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For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly tack and veer and hold the middle of the pond, far from the sportsman... but what beside safety they got by sailing in the middle of Walden I do not know, unless they love its water for the same reason that I do.
Henry David Thoreau
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Do not entertain doubts if they are not agreeable to you.
Henry David Thoreau
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We fritter away our energy and creativity . . . we get bogged down in the thick of thin things.
Henry David Thoreau
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Our science, so called, is always more barren and mixed with error than our sympathies.
Henry David Thoreau
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Perfect alchemists I keep who can transmute substances without end, and thus the corner of my garden is an inexhaustible treasure-chest. Here you can dig, not gold, but the value which gold merely represents and there is no Signor Blitz about it.
Henry David Thoreau
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Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then.
Henry David Thoreau
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A temple, you know, was anciently an open place without a roof, whose walls served merely to shut out the world and direct the mind toward heaven but a modern meeting-house shuts out the heavens, while it crowds the world into still closer quarters.
Henry David Thoreau