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
strange-places world strange
The world is a strange place for a playhouse to stand within it.
dream real character
In dreams we see ourselves naked and acting out our real characters, even more clearly than we see others awake.
men names bears
It is pitiful when a man bears a name for convenience merely, who has earned neither name nor fame.
civilization vaults economics
Bankruptcy and repudiation are the springboards from which much of our civilization vaults and turns its somersets, but the savagestands on the unelastic plank of famine.
kindness kitchen charity
Some show their kindness to the poor by employing them in their kitchens. Would they not be kinder if they employed themselves there?
garden simplicity simple-life
Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage.
may way poverty
Be not anxious to avoid poverty. In this way the wealth of the universe may be securely invested.
wealth rich poor
I am never rich in money, and I am never meanly poor.
found flourishing institutions
It will always be found that one flourishing institution exists and battens on another mouldering one. The Present itself is parasitic to this extent.
future past ideas
The past is only so heroic as we see it. It is the canvas on which our idea of heroism is painted, and so, in one sense, the dim prospectus of our future field.
dark light looks
Why look in the dark for light?
wall frost stones
Deep are the foundations of sincerity. Even stone walls have their foundation below the frost.
horse travel men
Roads are made for horses and men of business. I do not travel in them much.
travel latin civilization
The village is the place to which the roads tend, a sort of expansion of the highway, as a lake of a river.... The word is from the Latin villa, which together with via, a way, or more anciently ved and vella, Varro derives from veho, to carry, because the villa is the place to and from which things are carried.... Hence, too, the Latin word vilis and our vile, also villain. This suggests what kind of degeneracy villagers are liable to. They are wayworn by the travel that goes by and over them, without traveling themselves.