Quote

If a man were to place himself in an attitude to bear manfully the greatest evil that can be inflicted on him, he would find suddenly that there was no such evil to bear his brave back would go a-begging.

Henry David Thoreau

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

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
Men
Bears
Attitude
Manfully
Greatest
Inflicted
Evil
Begging
Place
Bravery
Back
Suddenly
Find
Bear
Would
Brave

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Image
Everything counts for gain when we are cosmically awake. Nothing counts, unless we are awake. No enjoyments last, no successes satisfy, no gains have meaning unless accomplished in a state of wakefulness.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
All the events which make the annals of the nations are but the shadows of our private experiences.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The effect of a good government is to make life more valuable of a bad one, to make it less valuable.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I am a good horse to travel, but not from choice a roadster. The landscape-painter uses the figures of men to mark a road. He would not make that use of my figure.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
To be awake is to be alive.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
. . . I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days. . . .
Henry David Thoreau
Image
If Nature is our mother, then God is our father.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Long enough I had heard of irrelevant things now at length I was glad to make acquaintance with the light that dwells in rotten wood. Where is all your knowledge gone to? It evaporates completely, for it has no depth.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
There is always room and occasion enough for a true book on any subject as there is room for more light the brightest day and more rays will not interfere with the first.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resigns his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity is open.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The scholar may be sure that he writes the tougher truth for the calluses on his palms. They give firmness to the sentence. Indeed, the mind never makes a great and successful effort, without a corresponding energy of the body.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Show me a man who feels bitterly toward John Brown, and let me hear what noble verse he can repeat. He'll be as dumb as if his lips were stone.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Wherever a man goes, men will pursue him and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently appreciated by mankind.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The gods are partial to no era, but steadily shines their light in the heavens, while the eye of the beholder is turned to stone.There was but the sun and the eye from the first. The ages have not added a new ray to the one, nor altered a fibre of the other.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
One should be always on the trail of one's own deepest nature. For it is the fearless living out of your own essential nature that connects you to the Divine.
Henry David Thoreau