Quote

I have not read far in the statutes of this Commonwealth. It is not profitable reading. They do not always say what is true and they do not always mean what they say.

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
Reading
Read
True
Mean
Always
Statutes
Commonwealth
Profitable
Law

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Image
I love nature, I love the landscape, because it is so sincere. It never cheats me. It never jests. It is cheerfully, musically earnest. I lie and relie on the earth.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Many have believed that Walden reached quite through to the other side of the globe.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The pleasures of the intellect are permanent, the pleasures of the heart are transitory.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I see less difference between a city and a swamp than formerly.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Thus the State never intentionally confronts a man's sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
We never conceive the greatness of our fates.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
What would we not give for some great poem to read now, which would be in harmony with the scenery,--for if men read aright, methinks they would never read anything but poems. No history nor philosophy can supply their place.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I have travelled a good deal in Concord.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined...
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Homeliness is almost as great a merit in a book as in a house, if the reader would abide there. It is next to beauty, and a very high art.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least - and it is commonly more than that - sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Let us not underrate the value of a fact it will one day flower into a truth.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
There is in my nature, methinks, a singular yearning toward all wildness.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The rich man is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
When the chopper would praise a pine, he will commonly tell you that the one he cut was so big that a yoke of oxen stood on its stump as if that were what the pine had grown for, to become the footstool of oxen.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
As for the complex ways of living, I love them not, however much I practice them. In as many places as possible, I will get my feet down to the earth.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
He who eats the fruit should at least plant the seed ay, if possible, a better seed than that whose fruit he has enjoyed.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I already, and for weeks afterward, felt my nature the coarser for this part of my woodland experience, and was reminded that ourlife should be lived as tenderly and daintily as one would pluck a flower.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The Indian navigator naturally distinguishes by a name those parts of a stream where he has encountered quick water and forks, andagain, the lakes and smooth water where he can rest his weary arms, since those are the most interesting and more arable parts to him.
Henry David Thoreau