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
spring winter gentle-rain
We loiter in winter while it is already spring.
palaces needs need-you
I will come to you, my friend, when I no longer need you. Then you will find a palace, not an almshouse.
gross primitive
It [is of] some advantage to live a primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization, if only to learn what are the gross necessities of life.
peace war party
What is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.
philosophical animal squirrels
The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest.
love lonely men
I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.
travel kindness home
I cannot but regard it as a kindness in those who have the steering of me that, by the want of pecuniary wealth, I have been nailed dawn to this my native region so long and steadily, and made to study and love this spot of earth more and more. What would signify in comparison a thin and diffused love and knowledge of the whole earth instead, got by wandering? The traveler's is but a barren and comfortless condition. Wealth will not buy a man a home in nature-house nor farm there. The man of business does not by his business earn a residence in nature, but is denaturalized rather.
thinking
I learned what it is to live in the open air, and I learned that our lives are domestic in more sense than we think.
life knowledge learning
No human being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature which holds its life by the same tenure that he does.
life courage mean
However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are.
wise wisdom ignorance
A man is wise with the wisdom of his time only, and ignorant with its ignorance.
simple men poetry
Good poetry seems so simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.
men woods looks
Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affection.
machines life-is friction
Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.