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It is possible to invent a house still more convenient and luxurious than we have...but shall we always study to obtain more of these things, and not sometimes to be content with less?

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
Always
Shall
Things
Study
Possible
Less
Luxurious
House
Obtain
Stills
Convenient
Still
Invent
Sometimes
Content

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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We cannot see anything until we are possessed with the idea of it, take it into our heads,--and then we can hardly see anything else.
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Wherever there is a channel for water, there is a road for the canoe.
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A man cannot wheedle nor overawe his Genius. It requires to be conciliated by nobler conduct than the world demands or can appreciate.
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I am accustomed to think very long of going anywhere,--am slow to move. I hope to hear a response of the oracle first.
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The chief want, in every state that I have been into, was a high and earnest purpose in its inhabitants.
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Nothing can shock a brave man but dullness.
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There is in my nature, methinks, a singular yearning toward all wildness.
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The great poem must have the stamp of greatness as well as its essence.
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He is blessed over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life in remembering the past
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The hawk is aerial brother of the wave which he sails over and surveys, those his perfect air-inflated wings answering to the elemental unfledged pinions of the sea.
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After all, I believe it is the style of thought entirely, and the style of expression, which makes the difference in books.
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The finest manners in the world are awkwardness and fatuity when contrasted with a finer intelligence. They appear but as the fashions of past days,--mere courtliness, knee-buckles and small- clothes, out of date.
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By my intimacy with nature I find myself withdrawn from man. My interest in the sun and the moon, in the morning and the evening, compels me to solitude.
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The only fruit which even much living yields seems to be often only some trivial success,--the ability to do some slight thing better. We make conquest only of husks and shells for the most part,--at least apparently,--but sometimes these are cinnamon and spices, you know.
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I have myself to respect, but to myself I am not amiable but my friend is my amiableness personified.
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In my short experience of human life, the outward obstacles, if there were any such, have not been living men, but the institutions of the dead.
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Even the facts of science may dust the mind by their dryness, unless they are ... rendered fertile by the dews of fresh and living truth. Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven.
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Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature -if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you -know that the morning and spring of your life are past. Thus may you feel your pulse.
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Most men cry better than they speak. You get more nurture out of them by pinching than addressing them.
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Our sadness is not sad, but our cheap joys.
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