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I am accustomed to think very long of going anywhere,--am slow to move. I hope to hear a response of the oracle first.

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
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Firsts
Slow
First
Anywhere
Going
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Long
Travel
Think
Move
Thinking
Hear
Oracle
Hope
Oracles
Moving
Accustomed

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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In what concerns you much, do not think that you have companions: know that you are alone in the world.
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Left to herself, nature is always more or less civilized, and delights in a certain refinement but where the axe has encroached upon the edge of the forest, the dead and unsightly limbs of the pine, which she had concealed with green banks of verdure, are exposed to sight.
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As they say in geology, time never fails, there is always enough of it, so I may say, criticism never fails.
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Farmers are respectable and interesting to me in proportion as they are poor.
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There may be an excess of cultivation as well as of anything else, until civilization becomes pathetic. A highly cultivated man,--all whose bones can be bent! whose heaven-born virtues are but good manners!
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Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads.
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Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life ... would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights' Entertainments.
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A strange age of the world this, when empires, kingdoms, and republics come a-begging to a private man's door, and utter their complaints at his elbow! I cannot take up a newspaper but I find that some wretched government or other, hard pushed and on its last legs, is interceding with me, the reader, to vote for it.
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Some have asked if the stock of men could not be improved,--if they could not be bred as cattle. Let Love be purified, and all therest will follow. A pure love is thus, indeed, the panacea for all the ills of the world.
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Nature is not made after such a fashion as we would have her. We piously exaggerate her wonders, as the scenery around our home.
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We slander the hyena man is the fiercest and cruelest animal.
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The hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men.
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The poet is he who can write some pure mythology today without the aid of posterity.
Henry David Thoreau
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You must get your living by loving, or at least half your life is a failure.
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Undoubtedly, in the most brilliant successes, the first rank is always sacrificed.
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I love nature, I love the landscape, because it is so sincere. It never cheats me. It never jests. It is cheerfully, musically earnest. I lie and relie on the earth.
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Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.
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When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left.
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Alas! the culture of an Irishman is an enterprise to be undertaken with a sort of moral bog hoe.
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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.
Henry David Thoreau