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
book dated era exists explain life man miracles present reading reveal somewhere
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.
abroad among companion found lonely man men stay thinking
I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.
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
afford man number proportion rich
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.
man meet pleased wild wish
I should be pleased to meet man in the woods. I wish he were to be encountered like wild caribous and moose.
compared fate man opinion private public rather thinks weak
Public opinion is a weak tyrant, compared with our private opinion - what a man thinks of himself, that is which determines, or rather indicates his fate
compared man opinion private public rather thinks tyrant weak
Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.
east fact frontiers man north wherever
The frontiers are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man confronts a fact
american-author far hears however loses man music pace perhaps step
If a man loses pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music in which he hears, however measured, or far away.
man pleasures riches richest whose
That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
man pleasure pleasures richest whose
That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
great mankind poets works
The works of the great poets have never yet been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them
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