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It is pitiful when a man bears a name for convenience merely, who has earned neither name nor fame.

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
Translator
Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Neither
Bears
Fame
Name
Names
Pitiful
Men
Convenience
Earned
Merely

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A sufficiently great and generous trust could never be abused.
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The greatest and saddest defect is not credulity, but an habitual forgetfulness that our science is ignorance.
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I do not know at first what it is that harms me. The men and things of to-day are wont to be fairer and truer in to-morrow's memory.
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The most primitive places left with us are the swamps, where the spruce still grows shaggy with usnea.
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There is no just and serene criticism as yet.
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I perceive that we inhabitants of New England live this mean life that we do because our vision does not penetrate the surface ofthings. We think that that is which appears to be.
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A hero's love is as delicate as a maiden's.
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While the Republic has already acquired a history world-wide, America is still unsettled and unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we live only on the shores of a continent even yet, and hardly know where the rivers come from which float our navy.
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I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home. I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful.
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Give me the old familiar world, post-office and all, with this ever new self, with this infinite expectation and faith, which does not know when it is beaten.
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When I go out of the house for a walk, uncertain as yet whither I will bend my steps, [I] submit myself to my instinct to decide for me.
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Some creatures are made to see in the dark.
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Dissent without action is consent.
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A traveler who looks at things with an impartial eye may see what the oldest inhabitant has not observed.
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Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then.
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The highest condition of art is artlessness.
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As I love nature, as I love singing birds...I love thee, my friend.
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Do what you love. Know your own bone gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.
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What means the fact--which is so common, so universal--that some soul that has lost all hope for itself can inspire in another listening soul an infinite confidence in it, even while it is expressing its despair?
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As far as our noblest hardwood forests are concerned, the animals, especially squirrels and jays, are our greatest and almost only benefactors. It is to them that we owe this gift. It is not in vain that the squirrels live in or about every forest tree, or hollow log, and every wall and heap of stones.
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