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
born failure men
Men are born to succeed, not to fail.
exaggerate expense life men praise regard
The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?
agent break government injustice life requires stop
If an injustice requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the government machine.
call close commonly good lie men pigs social together virtue warm
What men call social virtue, good fellowship, is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter, which lie close together to keep each other warm
men thinking solitude
I think that I love society as much as most, and am ready enough to fasten myself like a bloodsucker for the time to any full-blooded man that comes in my way. I am naturally no hermit, but might possibly sit out the sturdiest frequenter of the bar-room, if my business called me thither.
men space solitude
What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary?
men house soul
It is surprising how many great men and women a small house will contain. I have had twenty-five or thirty souls, with their bodies, at once under my roof, and yet we often parted without being aware that we had come very near to one another.
dog men solitude
The man of genius, like a dog with a bone, or the slave who has swallowed a diamond, or a patient with the gravel, sits afar and retired, off the road, hangs out no sign of refreshment for man and beast, but says, by all possible hints and signs, I wish to be alone,--good-by,--fare-well. But the Landlord can afford to live without privacy.
art men rome
See yonder thin column of smoke curling up through the woods from some invisible farmhouse, the standard raised over some rural homestead.... It is a hieroglyphic of man's life, and suggests more intimate and important things than the boiling of a pot. Where its fine column rises above the forest, like an ensign, some human life has planted itself,--and such is the beginning of Rome, the establishment of the arts, and the foundation of empires, whether on the prairies of America or the steppes of Asia.
men civilization heaven
There may be an excess of cultivation as well as of anything else, until civilization becomes pathetic. A highly cultivated man,--all whose bones can be bent! whose heaven-born virtues are but good manners!
communication men silence
There are some things which a man never speaks of, which are much finer kept silent about. To the highest communications we only lend a silent ear.
change men animal
Man is an animal who more than any other can adapt himself to all climates and circumstances.