"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."
"Perhaps anxious politicians may prove that only seventeen white men and five negroes were concerned in the late enterprise; but their very anxiety to prove this might suggest to themselves that all is not told. Why do they still dodge the truth? They are so anxious because of a dim consciousness of the fact, which they do not distinctly face, that at least a million of the free inhabitants of the United States would have rejoiced if it had succeeded. They at most only criticise the tactics."
3 likes
Source: Henry David Thoreau, Nancy L. Rosenblum (1996). “Thoreau: Political Writings”, p.142, 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."