Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreauwas an American essayist, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, and historian. A leading transcendentalist, Thoreau is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay Resistance to Civil Government, an argument for disobedience to an unjust state...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth12 July 1817
CountryUnited States of America
dirty men paws
Wherever a man goes, men will pursue him and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society.
character adequate language
We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the filed, but not to describe human character.
life men long-ago
Still we live meanly like ants, though the fable tells us we were long ago changed into men.
vices morality life-is
Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice.
cheating may ethics-and-morals
Don't be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.
mean environment ends
The improved means to the unimproved end.
needs environment wildness
We need the tonic of wildness and...nature.
faith inspiration self
Give me the old familiar world, post-office and all, with this ever new self, with this infinite expectation and faith, which does not know when it is beaten.
errors long sorrow
One cannot too soon forget his errors and misdemeanors for to dwell long upon them is to add to the offense, and repentance and sorrow can only be displaced by somewhat better, and which is as free and original as if they had not been.
men felt seeing
A man has not seen a thing who has not felt it.
summer weed yellow
Removing the weeds, putting fresh soil about the bean stems, and encouraging this weed which I had sown, making the yellow soil express its summer thought in bean leaves and blossoms rather than in wormwood and piper and millet grass, making the earth say beans instead of grass, - this was my daily work ....
summer believe world
Who could believe in the prophecies ... that the world would end this summer, while one milkweed with faith matured its seeds.
feet atmosphere desire
My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to commune with the spirit of the universe, to be intoxicated with the fumes, call it, of that divine nectar, to bear my head through atmospheres and over heights unknown to my feet, is perennial and constant.
rubber way obstacles
Trade and commerce, if they were not made of Indian rubber, would never manage to bounce over the obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way.