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At present the globe goes with a shattered constitution in its orbit.... No doubt the simple powers of nature, properly directed by man, would make it healthy and a paradise as the laws of man's own constitution but wait to be obeyed, to restore him to health and happiness.

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
Essayist
Naturalist
Philosopher
Poet
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
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Directed
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Paradise
Obeyed
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Orbit
Would
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Shattered
Men
Waiting
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Laws
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Constitution
Globes

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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Much verse fails of being poetry because it was not written exactly at the right crisis, though it may have been inconceivably near to it. It is only by a miracle that poetry is written at all. It is not recoverable thought, but a hue caught from a vaster receding thought.
Henry David Thoreau
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If rightly made, a boat would be a sort of amphibious animal, a creature of two elements, related by one half its structure to some swift and shapely fish, and by the other to some strong-winged and graceful bird.
Henry David Thoreau
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All men recognize the right of revolution that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable.
Henry David Thoreau
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It makes no odds where a man goes or stays, if he is only about his business.
Henry David Thoreau
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One is not born into the world to do everything but to do something.
Henry David Thoreau
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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
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But, commonly, men are as much afraid of love as of hate.
Henry David Thoreau
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I knew that the wall was the main thing in Quebec, and had cost a great deal of money.... In fact, these are the only remarkable walls we have in North America, though we have a good deal of Virginia fence, it is true.
Henry David Thoreau
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Nature spontaneously keeps us well. Do not resist her!
Henry David Thoreau
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If misery loves company, misery has company enough.
Henry David Thoreau
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A man might well pray that he may not taboo or curse any portion of nature by being buried in it.
Henry David Thoreau
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Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other breaks into pieces.
Henry David Thoreau
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The hounding of a dog pursuing a fox or other animal in the horizon may have first suggested the notes of the hunting-horn to alternate with and relieve the lungs of the dog. This natural bugle long resounded in the woods of the ancient world before the horn was invented.
Henry David Thoreau
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There is not one kind of food for all men. You must and you will feed those faculties which you exercise. The laborer whose body is weary does not require the same food with the scholar whose brain is weary.
Henry David Thoreau
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It would surpass the powers of a well man nowadays to take up his bed and walk, and I should certainly advise a sick one to lay down his bed and run.
Henry David Thoreau
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If we dealt only with the false and dishonest, we should at last forget how to speak truth.
Henry David Thoreau
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The art of life, of a poet's life, is, not having anything to do, to do something.
Henry David Thoreau
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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
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It [is of] some advantage to live a primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization, if only to learn what are the gross necessities of life.
Henry David Thoreau
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It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.
Henry David Thoreau