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
man meet pleased wild wish
I should be pleased to meet man in the woods. I wish he were to be encountered like wild caribous and moose.
believe rude wish
I have made a very rude translation of the Seven against Thebes, and Pindar too I have looked at, and wish he was better worth translating. I believe even the best things are not equal to their fame. Perhaps it would be better to translate fame itself,--or is not that what the poets themselves do? However, I have not done with Pindar yet.
government wish literature
The newspapers, I perceive, devote some of their columns specially to politics or government without charge; and this, one would say, is all that saves it; but as I love literature and to some extent the truth also, I never read those columns at any rate. I do not wish to blunt my sense of right so much.
hands wish action
I do not wish to be any more busy with my hands than is necessary.
wish would-be circumstances
I do not wish to kill nor to be killed, but I can foresee circumstances in which these things would be by me unavoidable.
nature men wish
I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute Freedom and Wildness, as contrasted with a Freedom and Culture merely civil, - to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society.
wise men wish
A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.
practice wish transcendentalism
I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary.
nature men wish
I love Nature partly because she is not man, but a retreat from him. None of his institutions control or pervade her. There a different kind of right prevails. In her midst I can be glad with an entire gladness. If this world were all man, I could not stretch myself, I should lose all hope. He is constraint, she is freedom to me. He makes me wish for another world. She makes me content with this.
travel journey wish
I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.
wish teach dies
I wish to learn what life has to teach, and not, when I come to die, discover that I have not truly lived.
office wish done
If the tax-gatherer, or any other public officer, asks me, as one has done, "But what shall I do?" my answer is, "If you really wish to do anything, resign your office." When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished.
respect wish mexico
I do not wish, it happens, to be associated with Massachusetts, either in holding slaves or in conquering Mexico. I am a little better than herself in these respects.
education land wish
When the State wishes to endow an academy or university, it grants it a tract of forest land: one saw represents an academy, a gang, a university.