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
men world disappointed
When I hear a grown man or woman say, "Once I had faith in men, now I have not," I am inclined to ask, "Who are you whom the world has disappointed? Have not you rather disappointed the world?"
men excuse-you generations
The man of genius knows what he is aiming at; nobody else knows. And he alone knows when something comes between him and his object. In the course of generations, however, men will excuse you for not doing as they do, if you will bring enough to pass in your own way.
men world
How rarely I meet with a man who can be free, even in thought! We all live according to rule. Some men are bedridden; all world-ridden.
men years land
The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this year higher than man has ever known it, and flood the parched uplands; even this may be the eventful year, which will drown out all our muskrats. It was not always dry land where we dwell. I see far inland the banks where the stream anciently washed, before science began to record its freshets.
rivers environmental way
It is pleasant to have been to a place the way a river went.
men thinking
As a man thinks of himself, so he is.
truth spring institutions
Where there is a lull in truth an institution springs up.
government giving haste
When I meet a government which says to me, "Your money or your life," why should I be in haste to give it my money?
independent simple simplicity
A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of any prince.
art imagination giving
The imagination, give it the least license, dives deeper and soars higher than Nature goes.
minorities majority-and-minority catchy
A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority.
art law facts
If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only fact, or the description of one actual phenomenon, to infer all the particular results at that point.
ocean boys men
It is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, ina government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one's being alone.
inspirational influence subtle
We perceive and are affected by changes too subtle to be described.