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
horse men important
The man whose horse trots a mile in a minute does not carry the most important messages.
ideas might information
A journal is a repository for all those fragmentary ideas and odd scraps of information that might otherwise be lost and which some day might lead to more "harmonious compositions."
apples house fields
There is one thought for the field, another for the house. I would have my thoughts, like wild apples, to be food for walkers, and will not warrant them to be palatable if tasted in the house.
sunset inspire desire
Every sunset I witness inspires me with the desire to go to West as distant and as fair as that which the sun goes down. Eastward I go only by force; but westward I go free.
responsibility successful independence
I am not responsible for the successful working of the machinery of society.
facts
I would stand upon facts.
book differences self-reliance
In most books, the I, of first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference.
self-reliance firsts remember
We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking.
science improvement invention
If words were invented to conceal thought, newspapers are a great improvement of a bad invention
book men unusual
Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institution - such call I good books.
summer morning taken
I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise til noon, rapt in a revery.
effort mind action
By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences; and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent.
gains loses
You never gain something but that you lose something.
truth wine color
As the least drop of wine tinges the whole goblet, so the least particle of truth colors our whole life.