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
clothes cultivate garden god poverty sell trouble whether
Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do want society.
civilization distrust enterprise requires
We should distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.
eat fried good necessary rat unusually
I was never unusually squeamish; I could sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish, if it was necessary
effort fall lie men talking
Men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up
breathe drink influences resign season taste
Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.
capacities judge nor
Man's capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedent, so little has been tried.
belly booming builds close hear smell solitary tonic whispering wilder
We need the tonic of wildness, to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.
achieving american-author goals motivational
What you get by achieving your goals is to as important as what you become by achieving your goals.
knowledge true
To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.
bottom current detect drink eternity fishing sandy shallow stream thin time time-and-time-management
Time is but the stream I go fishing in. I drink at it, but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. It's thin current slides away, but eternity remains.
civilization devoured glance lived marrow raw whose wildness
Give me a wildness whose glance no civilization can endure,-as if we lived on the marrow of koodoos devoured raw
harmony melody
Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody
american-author far hears however loses man music pace perhaps step
If a man loses pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music in which he hears, however measured, or far away.
bloody commit definition enable innocent men pay shed state taxes-and-taxation thousand violence violent
If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.