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Translate a book a dozen times from one language to another, and what becomes of its style? Most books would be worn out and disappear in this ordeal. The pen which wrote it is soon destroyed, but the poem survives.

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
Times
Poem
Language
Disappear
Ordeal
Another
Destroyed
Ordeals
Book
Wrote
Survives
Would
Soon
Pens
Becomes
Translate
Style
Worn
Books
Dozen

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The murmurs of many a famous river on the other side of the globe reach even to us here, as to more distant dwellers on its banksmany a poet's stream, floating the helms and shields of heroes on its bosom.
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I am amused to see from my window here how busily a man has divided and staked off his domain. God must smile at his puny fences running hither and thither everywhere over the land.
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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. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house.
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It is necessary not to be Christian to appreciate the beauty and significance of the life of Christ.
Henry David Thoreau
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I am not responsible for the successful working of the machinery of society.
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The lover wants no partiality. He says, Be so kind as to be just.
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I do not believe there are eight hundred human beings on the globe.
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The schools begin with what they call the elements, and where do they end?
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From my experience with wild apples, I can understand that there may be reason for a savage's preferring many kinds of food which the civilized man rejects. The former has the palate of an outdoor man. It takes a savage or wild taste to appreciate a wild fruit.
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I have no time to be in a hurry.
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I am struck by the simplicity of light in the atmosphere in the autumn, as if the earth absorbed none, and out of this profusion of dazzling light came the autumnal tints.
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Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps.
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If you would feel the full force of a tempest, take up your residence on the top of Mount Washington, or at the Highland Light, inTruro.
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Why should not our whole life and its scenery be actually thus fair and distinct? All our lives want a suitable background. They should at least, like the life of the anchorite, be as impressive to behold as objects in a desert, a broken shaft or crumbling mound against a limitless horizon.
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We discover a new world every time we see the earth again after it has been covered for a season with snow.
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The only people who ever get anyplace interesting are the people who get lost.
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I did not go to Boston, for with regard to that place I sympathize with one of my neighbors, an old man, who has not been there since the last war, when he was compelled to go. No, I have a real genius for staying at home.
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Whose are the truly labored sentences? From the weak and flimsy periods of the politician and literary man, we are glad to turn even to the description of work, the simple record of the month's labor in the farmer's almanac, to restore our tone and spirits.
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The philanthropist too often surrounds mankind with the remembrance of his own cast- off griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy. We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease, and take care that this does not spread by contagion.
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I have been breaking silence these twenty-three years and have hardly made a rent in it.
Henry David Thoreau