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
I would not have any one adopt my mode of living on any account...
home soul poor
How many a poor immortal soul I have met well-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it [an oversized home].
men complaining speak
I do not speak to those who are well employed, in whatever circumstances, and they know whether they are well employed or not; but mainly to the mass of men who are discontented, and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they might improve them.
greek chinese philosopher
The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindu, Persian, and Greek, were a class than which none has been poorer in outward riches, none so rich inward.
ocean solitude world
I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. [It allows you to] be the Mungo Park, the Lewis and Clark of your own streams and oceans; [to] explore your own higher latitudes; [to] be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.
lonely loneliness being-alone
We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers.
morning men innocence
Men are as innocent as the morning to the unsuspicious.
suffering gold want
I did not know that mankind was suffering for want of gold.
president orators
God is only the president of the day, and Webster is his orator.
mean years one-day
The golden mean in ethics, as in physics, is the centre of the system and that about which all revolve, and though to a distant and plodding planet it be an uttermost extreme, yet one day, when that planet's year is completed, it will be found to be central.
sides walden-pond globes
Many have believed that Walden reached quite through to the other side of the globe.
men track railroads
The Fitchburg Railroad touches the pond about a hundred rods south of where I dwell. I usually go to the village along its causeway, and am, as it were, related to society by this link. The men on the freight trains, who go over the whole length of the road, bow to me as to an old acquaintance, they pass me so often, and apparently they take me for an employee; and so I am. I too would fain be a track-repairer somewhere in the orbit of the earth.
echoes voice nymphs
The echo is, to some extent, an original sound, and therein is the magic and charm of it. It is not merely a repetition of what was worth repeating in the bell, but partly the voice of the wood; the same trivial words and notes sung by a wood-nymph.
fire bird flying
I was awakened at midnight by some heavy, low-flying bird, probably a loon, flapping by close over my head, along the shore. So, turning the other side of my half-clad body to the fire, I sought slumber again.