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What is man but a mass of thawing clay?
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
Thawing
Clay
Mass
Body
Men
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
The authority of government . . . can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it.
Henry David Thoreau
I wish to learn what life has to teach, and not, when I come to die, discover that I have not truly lived.
Henry David Thoreau
I do not see why the schoolmaster should be taxed to support the priest, and not the priest the schoolmaster.
Henry David Thoreau
As they say in geology, time never fails, there is always enough of it, so I may say, criticism never fails.
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
I should be glad if all the meadows on the earth were left in a wild state, if that were the consequence of men's beginning to redeem themselves.
Henry David Thoreau
All misfortune is but a stepping stone to fortune.
Henry David Thoreau
Under the one word house are included the schoolhouse, the almshouse, the jail, the tavern, the dwellinghouse and the meanest shed or cave in which men live contains elements of all these. But nowhere on the earth stands the entire and perfect house.
Henry David Thoreau
I may add that I am enjoying existence as much as ever, and regret nothing.
Henry David Thoreau
I say, break the law.
Henry David Thoreau
It is dry, hazy June weather. We are more of the earth, farther from heaven these days.
Henry David Thoreau
The most attractive sentences are not perhaps the wisest, but the surest and soundest.
Henry David Thoreau
Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.
Henry David Thoreau
The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement.
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
Roads are made for horses and men of business. I do not travel in them much.
Henry David Thoreau
It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
Henry David Thoreau
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
If there were one who lived wholly without the use of money, the State itself would hesitate to demand it of him. But the rich man--not to make any invidious comparison--is always sold to the institution which makes him rich.... Thus his moral ground is taken from under his feet.
Henry David Thoreau
Any moral philosophy is exceedingly rare. This of Menu addresses our privacy more than most. It is a more private and familiar, and at the same time, a more public and universal word, than is spoken in parlor or pulpit nowadays.
Henry David Thoreau
