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I always see those of whom I have heard well with a slight disappointment. They are so much better than the great herd, and yet the heavens are not shivered into diamonds over their heads.
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
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Ecologist
Environmentalist
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Naturalist
Philosopher
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
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More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God's property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.
Henry David Thoreau
Could slavery suggest a more complete servility than some of these journals exhibit? Is there any dust which their conduct does not lick, and make fouler still with its slime?
Henry David Thoreau
No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof.
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
We love to hear some men speak, though we hear not what they say the very air they breathe is rich and perfumed, and the sound of their voices falls on the ear like the rustling of leaves or the crackling of the fire. They stand many deep.
Henry David Thoreau
The squeaking of the pump sounds as necessary as the music of the spheres.
Henry David Thoreau
Cold and hunger seem more friendly to my nature than those methods which men have adopted and advise to ward them off.
Henry David Thoreau
Let Harlequin be taken with a fit of the colic, and his trappings will have to serve that mood too.
Henry David Thoreau
Indeed, the Englishman's history of New England commences only when it ceases to be New France.
Henry David Thoreau
So is the English Parliament provincial. Mere country bumpkins, they betray themselves, when any more important question arises for them to settle, the Irish question, for instance,--the English question why did I not say? Their natures are subdued to what they work in. Their good breeding respects only secondary objects.
Henry David Thoreau
The only sin in the world is ignorance.
Henry David Thoreau
Somehow strangely the vice of men gets well represented and protected but their virtue has none to plead its cause - nor any charter of immunities and rights.
Henry David Thoreau
What a glorious time they must have in that wilderness, far from mankind and election day!
Henry David Thoreau
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
Today you may write a chapter on the advantages of traveling, and tomorrow you may write another chapter on the advantages of not traveling.
Henry David Thoreau
The poet is a man who lives at last by watching his moods. An old poet comes at last to watch his moods as narrowly as a cat does a mouse.
Henry David Thoreau
What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.
Henry David Thoreau
A man sits as many risks as he runs.
Henry David Thoreau
It is a momentous fact that a man may be good, or he may be bad his life may be true, or it may be false it may be either a shame or a glory to him. The good man builds himself up the bad man destroys himself.
Henry David Thoreau
I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.
Henry David Thoreau
