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
kindness doing-good where-you-are
Begin where you are and such as you are, without aiming mainly to become of more worth, and with kindness aforethought, go about doing good.
live-life order should-have
Spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it, reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet. He should have gone up garret at once.
men experience savages
The civilized man is a more experienced and wiser savage.
cheer spring men
The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man's abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.
funny life dream
I do not know how to distinguish between waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?
appreciate pay compliment
A Friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us.
kindness character real-friends
We are sometimes made aware of a kindness long passed, and realize that there have been times when our friends' thoughts of us were of so pure and lofty a character that they passed over us like the winds of heaven unnoticed; when they treated us not as what we were, but as what we aspired to be.
morning stars real
Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man. The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.
thinking wind rocks
Talk of mysteries! — Think of our life in nature, — daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it, — rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! The actual world! The common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? Where are we?
despair should impart
We should impart our courage and not our despair.
cat destiny philosopher
What sort of philosophers are we, who know absolutely nothing of the origin and destiny of cats?
inevitable streets ifs
If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets.
law abiding honorable
To be right is more honorable than to be law abiding.
wisdom self-reliance should
I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.