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
independence action spirit
To act collectively is according to the spirit of our institutions.
men leisure action
A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence.
men action theory
The theories and speculations of men concern us more than their puny accomplishment. It is with a certain coldness and languor that we loiter about the actual and so-called practical.
action existence
We must heap up a great pile of doing, for a small diameter of being.
patience fall action
Let things alone; let them weigh what they will; let them soar or fall.
men knowing pay
How can a man be satisfied to entertain an opinion merely, and enjoy it? Is there any enjoyment in it, if his opinion is that he is aggrieved? If you are cheated out of a single dollar by your neighbor, you do not rest satisfied with knowing that you are cheated, or with saying that you are cheated, or even with petitioning him to pay you your due; but you take effectual steps at once to obtain the full amount, and see that you are never cheated again.
action take-time serpent
Take Time by the forelock. It is also the safest part to take a serpent by.
morality action unconcerned
But they who are unconcerned about the consequences of their actions are not therefore unconcerned about their actions.
fate destiny men
However, our fates at least are social. Our courses do not diverge; but as the web of destiny is woven it is fulled, and we are cast more and more into the centre. Men naturally, though feebly, seek this alliance, and their actions faintly foretell it.
nature father rome
The civilized nations--Greece, Rome, England--have been sustained by the primitive forests which anciently rotted where they stand. They survive as long as the soil is not exhausted. Alas for human culture! little is to be expected of a nation, when the vegetable mould is exhausted, and it is compelled to make manure of the bones of its fathers. There the poet sustains himself merely by his own superfluous fat, and the philosopher comes down on his marrow-bones.
nature health men
The same soil is good for men and for trees. A man's health requires as many acres of meadow to his prospect as his farm does loads of muck.
nature men race
A tanned skin is something more than respectable, and perhaps olive is a fitter color than white for a man,--a denizen of the woods. "The pale white man!" I do not wonder that the African pitied him.
nature flower men
Nature has from the first expanded the minute blossoms of the forest only toward the heavens, above men's heads and unobserved bythem. We see only the flowers that are under our feet in the meadows.
nature cities rivers
The whole tree itself is but one leaf, and rivers are still vaster leaves whose pulp is intervening earth, and towns and cities are the ova of insects in their axils.