Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
If labor mainly, or to any considerable degree, serves the purpose of a police, to keep men out of mischief, it indicates a rottenness at the foundation of our community.
Henry David Thoreau
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Police
Degrees
Rottenness
Foundation
Indicates
Labor
Considerable
Community
Mischief
Purpose
Mainly
Keep
Serves
Men
Degree
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
Law never made men a whit more just and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.
Henry David Thoreau
It is possible to invent a house still more convenient and luxurious than we have...but shall we always study to obtain more of these things, and not sometimes to be content with less?
Henry David Thoreau
Philosophy, certainly, is some account of truths the fragments and very insignificant parts of which man will practice in this workshop truths infinite and in harmony with infinity, in respect to which the very objects and ends of the so-called practical philosopher will be mere propositions, like the rest.
Henry David Thoreau
Hear! hear! screamed the jay from a neighboring tree, where I had heard a tittering for some time, winter has a concentrated and nutty kernel, if you know where to look for it.
Henry David Thoreau
We should come home from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day with new experience and character.
Henry David Thoreau
A man of fine perceptions is more truly feminine than a merely sentimental woman.
Henry David Thoreau
We must love our friend so much that she shall be associated with our purest and holiest thoughts alone.
Henry David Thoreau
Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.
Henry David Thoreau
I love you not as something private and personal, which is my own, but as something universal and worthy of love which I have found.
Henry David Thoreau
Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?
Henry David Thoreau
Glances of true beauty can be seen in the faces of those who live in true meekness.
Henry David Thoreau
I am no more lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden Pond itself. What company has that lonely lake,I pray?
Henry David Thoreau
The Ethiopian cannot change his skin nor the leopard his spots.
Henry David Thoreau
Every man has to learn the points of the compass again as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction.
Henry David Thoreau
The researcher is more memorable than the researched.
Henry David Thoreau
Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing.
Henry David Thoreau
The lover wants no partiality. He says, Be so kind as to be just.
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
If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too.
Henry David Thoreau
No man's thoughts are new, but the style of their expression is the never-failing novelty which cheers and refreshes men. If we were to answer the question, whether the mass of men, as we know them, talk as the standard authors and reviewers write, or rather as this man writes, we should say that he alone begins to write their language at all.
Henry David Thoreau
