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Men have come to such a pass that they frequently starve, not for want of necessaries, but for want of luxuries.

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
Frequently
Luxury
Pass
Come
Men
Necessaries
Luxuries
Starve

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I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.
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The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.
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The forests are held cheap after the white pine has been culled out and the explorers and hunters pray for rain only to clear theatmosphere of smoke.
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If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are translated?
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One attraction in coming to the woods to live was that I should have leisure and opportunity to see the spring come in.
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You may raise enough money to tunnel a mountain, but you cannot raise money enough to hire a man who is minding his own business.
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Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life ... would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights' Entertainments.
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Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe.
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Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost.
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But perhaps a man is not required to bury himself.
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Compliments and flattery oftenest excite my contempt by the pretension they imply for who is he that assumes to flatter me? To compliment often implies an assumption of superiority in the complimenter. It is, in fact, a subtle detraction.
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A man receives only what he is ready to receive, whether physically or intellectually or morally, as animals conceive at certain seasons their kind only. We hear and apprehend only what we already half know.
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If we were always, indeed, getting our living, and regulating our lives according to the last and best mode we had learned, we should never be troubled with ennui.
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It is tranquil people who accomplish much.
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Men seem anxious to accomplish an orderly retreat through the centuries, earnestly rebuilding the works behind them, as they are battered down by the encroachments of time but while they loiter, they and their works both fall prey to the arch enemy.
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The state does not demand justice of its members, but thinks that it succeeds very well with the least degree of it, hardly more than rogues practice and so do the neighborhood and the family. What is commonly called Friendship even is only a little more honor among rogues.
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No man loses ever on a lower level by magnanimity on a higher.
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Most men would feel shame if caught preparing with their own hands precisely such a dinner, whether of animal or vegetable food, as is every day prepared for them by others. Yet till this is otherwise we are not civilized, and, if gentlemen and ladies, are not true men and women. This certainly suggests what change is to be made.
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A stranger may easily detect what is strange to the oldest inhabitant, for the strange is his province.
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I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it.
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