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
poetry healthy speech
Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.
morality ethics affinity
You cannot receive a shock unless you have an electric affinity for that which shocks you.
morality ethics chiefs
What is morality but immemorial custom? Conscience is the chief of conservatives.
hands bravery doe
What recommends commerce to me is its enterprise and bravery. It does not clasp its hands and pray to Jupiter.
summer winter today
Today...the bluebirds, old and young, have revisited their box, as if they would fain repeat the summer without intervention of winter, if Nature would let them.
past anticipation remember
I live in the present. I only remember the past, and anticipate the future.
reflection men house
The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man's abode.
men unjust-society politics
In an unjust society the only place for a just man is prison.
eye may action
Great God, I ask thee for no meaner pelf Than that I may not disappoint myself, That in my action I may soar as high As I can now discern with this clear eye.
beautiful eye two-sides
Nature doth thus kindly heal every wound. By the mediation of a thousand little mosses and fungi, the most unsightly objects become radiant of beauty. There seem to be two sides of this world, presented us at different times, as we see things in growth or dissolution, in life or death. And seen with the eye of the poet, as God sees them, all things are alive and beautiful.
blessed environmental newspapers
Blessed are they who never read a newspaper, for they shall see Nature, and through her, God.
sweet house woods
What is sour in the house a bracing walk in the woods makes sweet.
country men mountain
The mission of men there seems to be, like so many busy demons, to drive the forest all out of the country, from every solitary beaver swamp and mountain-side, as soon as possible.
wisdom mean men
When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left.