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I have much to learn of the Indian, nothing of the missionary.
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
Indian
Christianity
Learn
Nothing
Much
Clergy
Missionary
Native
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
The greatest tragedy in life is to spend your whole life fishing only to discover it was never fish that you were after.
Henry David Thoreau
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.
Henry David Thoreau
See how he cowers and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears, not being immortal nor divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.
Henry David Thoreau
Man is an animal who more than any other can adapt himself to all climates and circumstances.
Henry David Thoreau
Friendship takes place between those who have an affinity for one another, and is a perfectly natural and inevitable result. No professions nor advances will avail.... It is a drama in which the parties have no part to act.
Henry David Thoreau
It is as hard to see one's self as to look backwards without turning around.
Henry David Thoreau
Unlike the Concord, the Merrimack is not a dead but a living stream, though it has less life within its waters and on its banks. It has a swift current, and, in this part of its course, a clayey bottom, almost no weeds, and comparatively few fishes.
Henry David Thoreau
It is the characteristic of great poems that they will yield of their sense in due proportion to the hasty and the deliberate reader. To the practical they will be common sense, and to the wise wisdom as either the traveler may wet his lips, or an army may fill its water-casks at a full stream.
Henry David Thoreau
The man who thrusts his manners upon me does as if he were to insist on introducing me to his cabinet of curiosities, when I wished to see himself.
Henry David Thoreau
Poetry is the mysticism of mankind.
Henry David Thoreau
Being a teacher is like being in jail once it's on your record, you can never get rid of it.
Henry David Thoreau
In the long run, we only hit what we aim at.
Henry David Thoreau
Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.
Henry David Thoreau
All things in this world must be seen with youthful, hopeful eyes.
Henry David Thoreau
We make needless ado about capital punishment,--taking lives, when there is no life to take.
Henry David Thoreau
I repeat that in this sense the most splendid court in Christendom is provincial, having authority to consult about Transalpine interests only, and not the affairs of Rome. A prætor or proconsul would suffice to settle the questions which absorb the attention of the English Parliament and the American Congress.
Henry David Thoreau
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
It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such.
Henry David Thoreau
If we were left solely to the wordy wit of legislators in Congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonal experience and the effectual complaints of the people, America would not long retain her rank among the nations.
Henry David Thoreau
The savage lives simply through ignorance and idleness or laziness, but the philosopher lives simply through wisdom.
Henry David Thoreau
