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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.

Henry David Thoreau

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Henry David Thoreau
Age: 44 †
Born: 1817
Born: July 12
Died: 1862
Died: May 6
Abolitionist
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Ecologist
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
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What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary?
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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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There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages.
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The hawk is aerial brother of the wave which he sails over and surveys, those his perfect air-inflated wings answering to the elemental unfledged pinions of the sea.
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Is the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man.
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Rise free from care before the dawn and seek adventure. Let the noon find you by other lakes, and the night overtake thee everywhere at home. There are no larger fields than these, no worthier games than may here be played.
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There are theoretical reformers at all times, and all the world over, living on anticipation.
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We have heard much about the poetry of mathematics, but very little of it has yet been sung. The ancients had a juster notion of their poetic value than we.
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We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success. What we do best or most perfectly is what we have most thoroughly learned by the longest practice, and at length it falls from us without our notice, as a leaf from a tree.
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A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It is continually receiving new life and motion from above. It is intermediate in its nature between land and sky.
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Every people have gods to suit their circumstances.
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If you indulge in long periods, you must be sure to have a snapper at the end.
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Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have. ... Shall we always study to obtain more, and not sometimes be content with less?
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In the religion of all nations a purity is hinted at, which, I fear, men never attain to.
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Man is an animal who more than any other can adapt himself to all climates and circumstances.
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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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When I would go a-visiting, I find that I go off the fashionable street,--not being inclined to change my dress,--to where man meets man, and not polished shoe meets shoe.
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One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned anything of absolute value by living.
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I have been breaking silence these twenty-three years and have hardly made a rent in it.
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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.
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