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
cultivate desirable law law-and-lawyers respect
It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for law, so much as a respect for right.
call names
Let us make distinctions, call things by the right names
american-author companion found love
I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
heavenly humility reveals
Humility like the darkness, reveals the heavenly lights.
bend force government instant itself living losing man recent single though transmit vitality
This American government -- what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will.
cheapest man pleasures richest whose
That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest
american-author wilderness
In wilderness is the preservation of the world.
desperate wisdom
It is characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
youth plant sail
The youth may build or plant or sail, only let him not be hindered from doing that which he tells me he would like to do.
advances common direction endeavors life meet success unexpected
If one advances confidently in the direction of one's dreams, and endeavors to live the life which one has imagined, one will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
mole people remind smacks wisdom
How earthy old people become -moldy as the grave! Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no foretaste of immortality in it. They remind me of earthworms and mole crickets.
advances common directions dreams endeavors life meet success unexpected
If one advances confidently in the directions of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
daily-life knows
In their daily life, all are braver than they know.
fishing sublime age
In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment and will never be more divine in the lapse of the ages. Time is but a stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it, but when I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away but eternity remains.