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As we looked up in silence to those distant lights, we were reminded that it was a rare imagination which first taught that the stars are worlds, and had conferred a great benefit on mankind.

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
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Ecologist
Environmentalist
Essayist
Naturalist
Philosopher
Poet
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Stars
Rare
Light
Benefit
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Conferred
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World
Silence
Distant
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Lights
Imagination
Worlds

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.
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Rise free from care before the dawn and seek adventure. Let the noon find you by other lakes, and the night overtake thee everywhere at home. There are no larger fields than these, no worthier games than may here be played.
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I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite - only a sense of existence. Well, anything for variety.
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The fire is the main comfort of the camp, whether in summer or winter
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We admire Chaucer for his sturdy English wit.... But though it is full of good sense and humanity, it is not transcendent poetry.For picturesque description of persons it is, perhaps, without a parallel in English poetry yet it is essentially humorous, as the loftiest genius never is.
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When I go into a museum and see the mummies wrapped in their linen bandages, I see that the lives of men began to need reform as long ago as when they walked the earth. I come out into the streets, and meet men who declare that the time is near at hand for the redemption of the race. But as men lived in Thebes, so do they live in Dunstable today.
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Unlike the Concord, the Merrimack is not a dead but a living stream, though it has less life within its waters and on its banks. It has a swift current, and, in this part of its course, a clayey bottom, almost no weeds, and comparatively few fishes.
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Bankruptcy and repudiation are the springboards from which much of our civilization vaults and turns its somersets, but the savagestands on the unelastic plank of famine.
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The most difficult thing to understand during conversation is silence.
Henry David Thoreau
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The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly. They make shift to live merely by conformity, practically as their fathers did, and are in no sense the progenitors of a nobler race of men.
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For eighteen hundred years, though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of legislation?
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Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. She exists for no other end. Do not resist. With the least inclination to be well, we should not be sick.
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The hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men.
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It is an unfortunate discovery certainly, that of a law which binds us where we did not know before that we were bound.
Henry David Thoreau
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The ears were made, not for such trivial uses as men are wont to suppose, but to hear celestial sounds.
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There are two classes of men called poets. The one cultivates life, the other art,... one satisfies hunger, the other gratifies the palate.
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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 believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life.
Henry David Thoreau
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The poet's body even is not fed like other men's, but he sometimes tastes the genuine nectar and ambrosia of the gods, and lives adivine life. By the healthful and invigorating thrills of inspiration his life is preserved to a serene old age.
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I have never met with a friend who furnished me sea-room. I have only tacked a few times and come to anchor - not sailed - made no voyage, carried no venture.
Henry David Thoreau