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
call names
Let us make distinctions, call things by the right names
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.
cultivate desirable law law-and-lawyers respect
It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for law, so much as a respect for right.
american-author companion found love
I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
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.
strength real son
The poet is no tender slip of fairy stock, who requires peculiar institutions and edicts for his defense, but the toughest son ofearth and of Heaven, and by his greater strength and endurance his fainting companions will recognize the God in him. It is the worshipers of beauty, after all, who have done the real pioneer work of the world.
dinner language parables
The dinner even is only the parable of a dinner, commonly.
graves constructs heathen
There have been some nations who could do nothing but construct tombs, and these are the only traces which they have left. They are the heathen.
slavery four united-states
The United States have a coffle of four millions of slaves. They are determined to keep them in this condition; and Massachusettsis one of the confederated overseers to prevent their escape.
trust spring rivers
The Xanthus or Scamander is not a mere dry channel and bed of a mountain torrent, but fed by the ever-flowing springs of fame... and I trust that I may be allowed to associate our muddy but much abused Concord River with the most famous in history.
odor corruption goodness
There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.
suspicion findings paid
We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect.