Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
There is something servile in the habit of seeking after a law which we may obey. We may study the laws of matter at and for our convenience, but a successful life knows no law.
Henry David Thoreau
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Freedom
Convenience
Success
Obey
May
Seeking
Matter
Laws
Something
Habit
Life
Study
Successful
Law
Servile
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
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.
Henry David Thoreau
Every sentence is the result of a long probation.
Henry David Thoreau
I sometimes despair of getting anything quite simple and honest done in this world by the help of men. They would have to be passed through a powerful press first, to squeeze their old notions out of them, so that they would not soon get upon their legs again.
Henry David Thoreau
Count your age with friends but not with years.
Henry David Thoreau
We never exchange more than three words with a Friend in our lives on that level to which our thoughts and feelings almost habitually rise.
Henry David Thoreau
How earthy old people become --moldy as the grave! Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no foretaste of immortality in it. They remind me of earthworms and mole crickets.
Henry David Thoreau
Though my life is low, if my spirit looks upward habitually at an elevated angle, it is as if it were redeemed. When the desire to be better than we are is really sincere we are instantly elevated, and so far better already.
Henry David Thoreau
Friends are made for caring and sharing. Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody.
Henry David Thoreau
The squeaking of the pump sounds as necessary as the music of the spheres.
Henry David Thoreau
I seem to have dodged all my days with one or two persons, and lived upon expectation,--as if the bud would surely blossom and soI am content to live.
Henry David Thoreau
If I ever see more clearly at one time than at another, the medium through which I see is clearer.
Henry David Thoreau
As yesterday and the historical ages are past, as the work of today is present, so some flitting perspectives and demi-experiencesof the life that is in nature are in time veritably future, or rather outside of time, perennial, young, divine, in the wind and rain which never die.
Henry David Thoreau
We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect. [So why not suspect good rather than bad in events, people and life and thereby find it more?]
Henry David Thoreau
When a man's conscience and the laws clash, it is his conscience that he must follow.
Henry David Thoreau
We do not associate the idea of antiquity with the ocean, nor wonder how it looked a thousand years ago, as we do of the land, for it was equally wild and unfathomable always.
Henry David Thoreau
There is no history of how bad became better.
Henry David Thoreau
Surely the writer is to address a world of laborers, and such therefore must be his own discipline.
Henry David Thoreau
Our taste is too delicate and particular. It says nay to the poet's work, but never yea to his hope.
Henry David Thoreau
As long as there is satire, the poet is, as it were, particeps criminis.
Henry David Thoreau
Whatever has not come under the sway of man is wild. In this sense original and independent men are wild - not tamed and broken by society.
Henry David Thoreau
