Quote

A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It is continually receiving new life and motion from above. It is intermediate in its nature between land and sky.

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
Translator
Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Water
Lakes
Spirit
Receiving
Nature
Motion
Life
Field
Intermediate
Sky
Betrays
Air
Ponds
Fields
Continually
Land
Betray

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My neighbors tell me of their adventures with famous gentlemen and ladies, what notabilities they met at the dinner-table but I am no more interested in such things than in the contents of the Daily Times. The interest and the conversation are about costume and manners chiefly but a goose is a goose still, dress it as you will.
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We seem to think that the earth must go through the ordeal of sheep-pasturage before it is habitable by man.
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Time is like a handful of sand - the tighter you grasp it, the faster it runs through your fingers.
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As all curves have reference to their centres or foci, so all beauty of character has reference to the soul, and is a graceful gesture of recognition or waving of the body toward it.
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Your richest veins don't lie nearest the surface.
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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.
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So easy is it, though many housekeepers doubt it, to establish new and better customs in the place of the old.
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There must be some nerve and heroism in our love, as of a winter morning.
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I never dreamed of any enormity greater than I have committed. I never knew, and never shall know, a worse man than myself.
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In all perception of the truth there is a divine ecstasy, an inexpressible delirium of joy, as when a youth embraces his betrothed virgin.
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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.
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There are many skillful apprentices, but few master workmen.
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A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book.
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If we live in the Nineteenth Century, why should we not enjoy the advantages which the Nineteenth Century offers? Why should our life be in any respect provincial?
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Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are.
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It will always be found that one flourishing institution exists and battens on another mouldering one. The Present itself is parasitic to this extent.
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There are some things which a man never speaks of, which are much finer kept silent about. To the highest communications we only lend a silent ear.
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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.
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Be as the sailor who keeps the polestar in his eye. By so doing we may not arrive at our port within a calculable period, but we will maintain a true course.
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The press is, almost without exception, corrupt.
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