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
bird caves innocence
Birds do not sing in caves, nor do doves cherish their innocence in dovecots.
children thinking years
I am struck by the fact that the more slowly trees grow at first, the sounder they are at the core, and I think that the same is true of human beings. We do not wish to see children precocious, making great strides in their early years like sprouts, producing a soft and perishable timber, but better if they expand slowly at first, as if contending with difficulties, and so are solidified and perfected. Such trees continue to expand with nearly equal rapidity to extreme old age.
freedom law world
I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.
art art-is conditions
The highest condition of art is artlessness.
writing heat great-writing
Write while the heat is in you.
nature home solitary
I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home.
art moon simple
Perchance, coming generations will not abide the dissolution of the globe, but, availing themselves of future inventions in aerial locomotion, and the navigation of space, the entire race may migrate from the earth, to settle some vacant and more western planet.... It took but little art, a simple application of natural laws, a canoe, a paddle, and a sail of matting, to people the isles of the Pacific, and a little more will people the shining isles of space. Do we not see in the firmament the lights carried along the shore by night, as Columbus did? Let us not despair or mutiny.
literature
In literature it is only the wild that attracts us.
god servant asks
When you knock, ask to see God — none of the servants.
spring winter men
They were pleasant spring days, in which the winter of man's discontent was thawing as well as the earth, and the life that had lain torpid began to stretch itself.
government doe copernicus
Why does it [government] always crucify Christ, and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?
music fear danger
When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable.
paper vote influence
Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence.
men stories
Wherever men have lived, there is a story to be told