Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau

Writer, Philosopher

Henry David Thoreau was an American author and philosopher known for his work 'Walden' and his advocacy for naturalism and civil disobedience.

Men Nature Life Thinking Book Inspirational
Born
July 12, 1817
Died
May 6, 1862
Quotes
2.8K
Rank
#46

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Henry David Thoreau quotes (page 64 of 139)

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"In our most trivial walks, we are constantly, though unconsciously, steering like pilots by certain well-known beacons and headlands, and if we go beyond our usual course we still carry in our minds the bearing of some neighboring cape; and not till we are completely lost, or turned round,--for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost,--do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature."

Nature Eye Men
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"Making a logging-road in the Maine woods is called "swamping" it, and they who do the work are called "swampers." I now perceivedthe fitness of the term. This was the most perfectly swamped of all the roads I ever saw. Nature must have coöperated with art here."

Art Nature Swamps
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"It is now many years that men have resorted to the forest for fuel and the materials of the arts: the New Englander and the New Hollander, the Parisian and the Celt, the farmer and Robin Hood, Goody Blake and Harry Gill; in most parts of the world, the prince and the peasant, the scholar and the savage, equally require still a few sticks from the forest to warm them and cook their food. Neither could I do without them."

Art Men Years
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"It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar. Yet do this even till you can do better, and you may perhaps find some "Symmes' Hole" by which to get at the inside at last."

Cat Zanzibar World
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"The hawk is aerial brother of the wave which he sails over and surveys, those his perfect air-inflated wings answering to the elemental unfledged pinions of the sea."

Brother Air Sea
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"A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart."

War Heart Order
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"Unpremeditated music is the true gauge which measures the current of our thoughts; the very undertow of our life's stream."

Gauges Currents Music Is
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"We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty."

Blessed Fall Past
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"We are not what we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for what we are capable of being."

Literature Treats Esteem
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"The largest pond is as sensitive to atmospheric changes as the globule of mercury in its tube."

Change Lakes Ponds
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"Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the rails. Let us rise early and fast, or break fast, gently and without perturbation; let company come and let company go, let the bells ring and the children cry,-determine to make a day of it."

Life Children Fall
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"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."

Practice Wish Transcendentalism
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"What wealth is it to have such friends that we cannot think of them without elevation!"

Friendship Real Thinking
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"True, there are architects so called in this country, and I have heard of one at least possessed with the idea of making architectural ornaments have a core of truth, a necessity, and hence a beauty, as if it were a revelation to him. All very well perhaps from his point of view, but only a little better than the common dilettantism."

Beauty Country Views
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"This American government - what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will."

Integrity Men Vitality
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"The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly."

Success Scholar Thinker
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"We are apt to imagine that this hubbub of Philosophy, Literature, and Religion, which is heard in pulpits, lyceums, and parlors, vibrates through the universe, and is as catholic a sound as the creaking of the earth's axle. But if a man sleeps soundly, he will forget it all between sunset and dawn."

Philosophy Sunset Sleep
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"This fond reiteration of the oldest expressions of truth by the latest posterity, content with slightly and religiously retouchingthe old material, is the most impressive proof of a common humanity."

Truth Expression Common Humanity
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"The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get "a good job," but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it."

Jobs Men Pay
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"Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge college is as solitary as a dervis in the desert."

College Men Space
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