Quote

For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly tack and veer and hold the middle of the pond, far from the sportsman... but what beside safety they got by sailing in the middle of Walden I do not know, unless they love its water for the same reason that I do.

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
Reason
Safety
Veer
Love
Unless
Sportsman
Hold
Pond
Days
Ponds
Middle
Ducks
Hours
Sailing
Walden
Water
Beside
Cunningly
Fall
Watched
Tack

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Our thoughts are epochs in our lives all else is but as a journal of the winds that blow while we are here.
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The sport of digging the bait is nearly equal to that of catching the fish, when one's appetite is not too keen.
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What are men celebrating? They are all on a committee of arrangements, and hourly expect a speech from somebody. God is only the president of the day, and Webster is his orator.
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It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart it being much more sensitive.
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In society you will not find health, but in nature. Unless our feet at least stood in the midst of nature, all our faces would bepale and livid. Society is always diseased, and the best is the most so.
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What do the botanists know? Our lives should go between the lichen and the bark. The eye may see for the hand, but not for the mind. We are still being born, and have as yet but a dim vision of sea and land, sun, moon, and stars, and shall not see clearly till after nine days at least.
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To regret deeply is to live afresh.
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A true Friendship is as wise as it is tender. The parties to it yield implicitly to the guidance of their love, and know no otherlaw nor kindness.
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It is one of the signs of the times. We confess that we have risen from reading this book with enlarged ideas, and grander conceptions of our duties in this world. It did expand us a little.
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What a fool he must be who thinks that his El Dorado is anywhere but where he lives.
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What an admirable training is science for the more active warfare of life! Indeed, the unchallenged bravery which these studies imply, is far more impressive than the trumpeted valor of the warrior.
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A slight sound at evening lifts me up by the ears, and makes life seem inexpressibly serene and grand. It may be Uranus, or it may be in the shutter.
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Poverty ... It is life near the bone, where it is sweetest.
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I have travelled a good deal in Concord.
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I mean that they (students) should not play life, or study it merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning to end. How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living? Methinks this would exercise their minds as much as mathematics.
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Verily, chemistry is not a splitting of hairs when you have got half a dozen raw Irishmen in the laboratory.
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