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
constant senses suffer
I have the habit of attention to such excess, that my senses get no rest - but suffer from a constant strain.
either hear leaves mouth refreshing taken
Every day or two, I strolled to the village to hear some of the gossip which is incessantly going on there, circulating either from mouth to mouth, or from newspaper to newspaper, and which, taken in homeopathic doses, was really as refreshing in its way as the rustle of leaves and the peeping of frogs.
good
Be not simply good - be good for something.
life
Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.
agent break government injustice life requires stop
If an injustice requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the government machine.
natural
How sweet is the perception of a new natural fact!
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
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.
dreams life truest
Our truest life is when we are in our dreams awake.
anew knew progress unlearn
When any real progress is made, we unlearn and learn anew what we thought we knew before.
exaggerate expense life men praise regard
The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?
branches evil striking thousand
There are a thousand at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.
canvas imagination
This world is but a canvas to our imaginations.