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
cousin real might
How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual friends, that we might go and meet their ideal cousins.
friendship real thinking
What wealth is it to have such friends that we cannot think of them without elevation!
real real-friends harmony
Friends will not only live in harmony, but in melody.
hard-work men self
I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living. All great enterprises are self-supporting. The poet, for instance, must sustain his body by his poetry, as a steam planing-mill feeds its boilers with the shavings it makes. You must get your living by loving.
wine men water
A man may acquire a taste for wine or brandy, and so lose his love for water, but should we not pity him.
atheist support priests
I do not see why the schoolmaster should be taxed to support the priest, and not the priest the schoolmaster.
friendship cute take-me
My friend is one... who take me for what I am.
loneliness men thinking
You think that I am impoverishing myself withdrawing from men, but in my solitude I have woven for myself a silken web or chrysalis, and, nymph-like, shall ere long burst forth a more perfect creature, fitted for a higher society.
patriotic sacrifice self
Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads.
intelligent giving intelligence
We need only travel enough to give our intellects an airing.
self sobriety society
Sobriety, severity, and self-respect are the foundations of all true sociality.
years silence three
I have been breaking silence these twenty-three years and have hardly made a rent in it.
weed garden bird
Shall I not rejoice also at the abundance of the weeds whose seeds are the granary of the birds?
money wealth
The only wealth is life.