Quote

We should endeavor practically in our lives to correct all the defects which our imagination detects.

Henry David Thoreau

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Reform
Imagination
Lives
Detects
Practically
Defects
Endeavor
Correct

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Image
Truth never turns to rebuke falsehood her own straightforwardness is the severest correction.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Life is so short that it is not wise to take roundabout ways, nor can we spend much time in waiting.... We have not got half-way to dawn yet.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The words of some men are thrown forcibly against you and adhere like burrs.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
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
Image
All great enterprises are self-supporting.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resigns his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
It is not so important that many should be good as you, as that there be some absolute goodness somewhere for that will leaven the whole lump.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?
Henry David Thoreau
Image
We must heap up a great pile of doing, for a small diameter of being.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
There is one consolation in being sick and that is the possibility that you may recover to a better state than you were ever in before.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I turned my face more exclusively than ever to the woods, where I was better known.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Go confidently ... Live the life that you imagined.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who have understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks,-who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The poet is a man who lives at last by watching his moods. An old poet comes at last to watch his moods as narrowly as a cat does a mouse.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
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.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
See how he cowers and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears, not being immortal nor divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.
Henry David Thoreau