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I should be glad if all the meadows on the earth were left in a wild state, if that were the consequence of men's beginning to redeem themselves.
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
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
States
Wild
Men
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Beginning
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Redeem
Nature
Meadows
Earth
Wilderness
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
Thus the State never intentionally confronts a man's sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion.
Henry David Thoreau
Yet the New Testament treats of man and man's so-called spiritual affairs too exclusively, and is too constantly moral and personal, to alone content me, who am not interested solely in man's religious or moral nature, or in man even.
Henry David Thoreau
Be wary of technology it is often merely an improved means to an unimproved end.
Henry David Thoreau
There is nothing more difficult to find than oneself.
Henry David Thoreau
I did not know that mankind was suffering for want of gold.
Henry David Thoreau
Those who work much do not work hard.
Henry David Thoreau
A man cannot wheedle nor overawe his Genius. It requires to be conciliated by nobler conduct than the world demands or can appreciate.
Henry David Thoreau
One piece of good sense would be more memorable than a monument as high as the moon.
Henry David Thoreau
Some simple dishes recommend themselves to our imaginations as well as palates.
Henry David Thoreau
How full of the creative genius is the air in which these [snowflakes] are generated! I should hardly admire them more if real stars fell and lodged on my coat. Nature is full of genius. Full of the divinity. So that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.
Henry David Thoreau
Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep.
Henry David Thoreau
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.
Henry David Thoreau
How can he remember well his ignorance - which his growth requires - who has so often to use his knowledge?
Henry David Thoreau
In order to die, you must first have lived.
Henry David Thoreau
The ocean is a wilderness reaching round the globe, wilder than a Bengal jungle, and fuller of monsters, washing the very wharves of our cities and the gardens of our sea-side residences.
Henry David Thoreau
Carlyle said that how to observe was to look, but I say that it is rather to see, and the more you look the less you will observe.
Henry David Thoreau
It is difficult to begin without borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit your fellowmen to have an interest in your enterprise.
Henry David Thoreau
The oldest, wisest politician grows not more human so, but is merely a gray wharf rat at last.
Henry David Thoreau
If Columbus was the first to discover the islands, Americus Vespucius and Cabot, and the Puritans, and we their descendants, havediscovered only the shores of America.
Henry David Thoreau
I wished only to be set down in Canada, and take one honest walk there as I might in Concord woods of an afternoon.
Henry David Thoreau
