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Nearest to all things is that power which fashions their being. Next to us the grandest laws are constantly being executed. Next to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are.

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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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
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Summer passes into autumn in some unimaginable point of time, like the turning of a leaf.
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Every gazette brings accounts of the untutored freaks of the wind,--shipwrecks and hurricanes which the mariner and planter acceptas special or general providences but they touch our consciences, they remind us of our sins. Another deluge would disgrace mankind.
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Men seem anxious to accomplish an orderly retreat through the centuries, earnestly rebuilding the works behind them, as they are battered down by the encroachments of time but while they loiter, they and their works both fall prey to the arch enemy.
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We have need to be earth-born as well as heaven-born, gegeneis, as was said of the Titans of old, or in a better sense than they.
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That man is richest who's pleasure are cheapest.
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How little do the most wonderful inventions of modern times detain us. They insult nature. Every machine, or particular application, seems a slight outrage against universal laws.
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It is true, we are such poor navigators that our thoughts, for the most part, stand off and on upon a harborless coast, are conversant only with the bights of the bays of poesy, or steer for the public ports of entry, and go into the dry docks of science, where they merely refit for this world, and no natural currents concur to individualize them.
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The knowledge of an unlearned man is living and luxuriant like a forest, but covered with mosses and lichens and for the most part inaccessible and going to waste the knowledge of the man of science is like timber collected in yards for public works, which still supports a green sprout here and there, but even this is liable to dry rot.
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Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution.
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Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping.
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We cannot see anything until we are possessed with the idea of it, take it into our heads,--and then we can hardly see anything else.
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There is one consolation in being sick and that is the possibility that you may recover to a better state than you were ever in before.
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We need only travel enough to give our intellects an airing.
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Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw.
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The church is a sort of hospital for men's souls, and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies. Those who are taken into it live like pensioners in their Retreat or Sailors' Snug Harbor, where you may see a row of religious cripples sitting outside in sunny weather.
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The philosopher's conception of things will, above all, be truer than other men's, and his philosophy will subordinate all the circumstances of life. To live like a philosopher is to live, not foolishly, like other men, but wisely and according to universal laws.
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When you knock, ask to see God — none of the servants.
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Every man is the builder of a temple called his body.
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There are various, nay, incredible faiths why should we be alarmed at any of them? What man believes, God believes.
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It makes no odds where a man goes or stays, if he is only about his business.
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