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
actual backs ourselves turning
How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual friends.
freedom law men
The law will never make men free, it is men that have to make the law free.
actual backs cousins ideal meet ourselves turning
How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual friends, that we may go and meet their ideal cousins
clean conscience greater lower man patch sound stood sure
No man has ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his cloths; yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience
house study sometimes
It is possible to invent a house still more convenient and luxurious than we have...but shall we always study to obtain more of these things, and not sometimes to be content with less?
imagination imagine life living waking
I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?
absolutely actual bored commonly confined confusion elements essential far few greater harmony ignorance infer infinite knew law laws mountain nature notions number outline particular points result results scientists seemingly though varies
If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only one fact, or the description of one actual phenomenon, to infer all the particular results at that point. Now we know only a few laws, and our result is vitiated, not, of course, by any confusion or irregularity in Nature, but by our ignorance of essential elements in the calculation. Our notions of law and harmony are commonly confined to those instances which we detect; but the harmony which results from a far greater number of seemingly conflicting, but really concurring, laws, which we have not detected, is still more wonderful. The particular laws are as our points of view, as, to the traveler, a mountain outline varies with every step, and it has an infinite number of profiles, though absolutely but one form. Even when cleft or bored through it is not comprehended in its entireness.
asked aunt frogs half hear heard hour life maria promise stood today
My Aunt Maria asked me to read the life of Dr. Chalmers,which, however, I did not promise to do.Yesterday, Sunday, she was heard through the partitionshouting to my Aunt Jane, who is deaf, 'Think of it!He stood half an hour today to hear the frogs croak,and he wouldn't read the life of Chalmers.'
love-you love-your-life poor
Love your life, poor as it is.
certain conscious criticism however human intense note presence remote self-knowledge sensible sharing stand taking thoughts
I know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, or thoughts are affection; and am sensible of certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is no part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you.
affect critical elevated highest man quality worthy
To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.
affect highest quality
To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of the arts.
edit women
To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit it and read it are old women over their tea.
difference drinking eating mere strength
There is a difference between eating and drinking for strength and for mere gluttony.