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
according love merely subtle wisdom
To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts; but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates.
men blood style
Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.
actual choose difficult direct direction exist fain ideal interior liable love magnetism path perfectly stupidity taken travel wrong yield
I belive that there is a subtile magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright. It is not indifferent to us which way we walk. There is a right way; but we are very liable from heedlessness and stupidity to take the wrong one. We would fain take that walk, never yet taken by us through this actual world, which is perfectly symbolical of the path which we love to travel in the interior and ideal world; and sometimes, no doubt, we find it difficult to choose our direction, because it does not yet exist distinctly in our idea.
expect harvest seed thoughts-and-thinking time
How can they expect a harvest of thought who have not had the seed time of character.
educate experiment learn mathematics minds trying youths
How could youths better learn to live than by once trying the experiment of living? Methinks this would educate their minds as much as mathematics
goodness investment
Goodness is the only investment which never fails.
good healthy mankind meet men natural poet poetry seems simple wonder
Good poetry seems too simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.
delicate graceful small
A pretty little graceful fellow, too small and delicate to be rapacious.
dozen exactly five half might miles particular visited
I often visited a particular plant four or five miles distant, half a dozen times within a fortnight, that I might know exactly when it opened.
I cannot read a single word of the Hindoos without being elevated.
life marrow
I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all that was not life.
grateful thanksgiving
I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual.
above advice aim good morality simply
Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.
apple desperate far haste hears however man mature measured music pace perhaps purpose soon step tree
Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured and far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple tree or an oak.