"It's the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us. The question is not what you look at but what you see."
"I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born?"
7 likes
Source: Henry David Thoreau, Nancy L. Rosenblum (1996). “Thoreau: Political Writings”, p.24, Cambridge University Press
About the author
Same author
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
"Simplify your life. Don't waste the years struggling for things that are unimportant. Don't burden yourself with possessions. Keep your needs and wants simple and enjoy what you have. Don't destroy your peace of mind by looking back, worrying about the past. Live in the present. Simplify!"
"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined..."
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately."
"be yourself- not your idea of what you think somebody else's idea of yourself should be."
"What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us."