We are a nation of politicians, concerned about the outmost defenses only of freedom. It is our children's children who may perchance be really free.
Henry David ThoreauGovernment is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.
Henry David ThoreauWhen we come down into the distant village, visible from the mountain-top, the nobler inhabitants with whom we peopled it have departed, and left only vermin in its desolate streets. It is the imagination of poets which puts those brave speeches into the mouths of their heroes.
Henry David ThoreauTo say that God has given a man many and great talents frequently means that he has brought his heavens down within reach of his hands.
Henry David ThoreauWe are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.
Henry David ThoreauAlmost all wild apples are handsome. They cannot be too gnarly and crabbed and rusty to look at. The gnarliest will have some redeeming traits even to the eye.
Henry David ThoreauThe wildest dreams of wild men, even, are not the less true, though they may not recommend themselves to the sense which is most common among Englishmen and Americans to-day. It is not every truth that recommends itself to the common sense. Nature has a place for the wild clematis as well as for the cabbage. Some expressions of truth are reminiscent,--others merely sensible, as the phrase is,--others prophetic.
Henry David ThoreauLike speaks to like only; labor to labor, philosophy to philosophy, criticism to criticism, poetry to poetry. Literature speaks how much still to the past, how little to the future, how much to the East, how little to the West.
Henry David ThoreauNot till we are completely lost, or turned round, do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature.
Henry David ThoreauWe should read history as little critically as we consider the landscape, and be more interested by the atmospheric tints and various lights and shades which the intervening spaces create than by its groundwork and composition.
Henry David ThoreauThis world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! I am awaked almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. It interrupts my dreams. There is no sabbath. It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work.
Henry David ThoreauWe live thick and are in each other's way, and stumble over one another, and I think we thus lose some respect for one another.
Henry David ThoreauTruth strikes us from behind and in the dark, as well as from before and in broad daylight.
Henry David ThoreauI have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.
Henry David ThoreauSimplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail.
Henry David ThoreauThe more you have thought and written on a given theme, the more you can still write. Thought breeds thought. It grows under your hands.
Henry David ThoreauHe who cannot read is worse than deaf and blind, is yet but half alive, is still-born.
Henry David ThoreauEvery man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?
Henry David ThoreauIn my cheapest moments I am apt to think that it is n't my business to be "seeking the spirit," but as much its business to be seeking me.
Henry David ThoreauFaint heart never won true friend. O my friend, may it come to pass, once, that when you are my friend I may be yours.
Henry David ThoreauHere I am thirty-four years old, and yet my life is almost wholly unexpanded. How much time is in the germ! There is such an interval between my ideal and the actual in many circumstances that I may say I am unborn.
Henry David ThoreauThis was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting. A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence.
Henry David ThoreauFor the most part, we are not where we are, but in a false position. Through an infirmity of our natures, we suppose a case, and put ourselves into it, and hence are in two cases at the same time, and it is doubly difficult to get out.
Henry David ThoreauAll sound heard at the greatest possible distance produces one and the same effect, a vibration of the universal lyre, just as the intervening atmosphere makes a distant ridge of earth interesting to our eyes by the azure tint it imparts to it.
Henry David ThoreauLet a slight snow come and cover the earth, and the tracks of men will show how little the woods and fields are frequented.
Henry David ThoreauI should consider it a greater success to interest one wise and earnest soul, than a million unwise and frivolous.
Henry David ThoreauOur hymn-books resound with a melodious cursing of God and enduring Him forever.
Henry David ThoreauThe rich man is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue.
Henry David ThoreauThe true harvest of my life is intangible - a little star dust caught, a portion of the rainbow I have clutched.
Henry David ThoreauA simple woman down in Tyngsborough, at whose house I once stopped to get a draught of water, when I said, recognizing the bucket, that I had stopped there nine years before for the same purpose, asked if I was not a traveler, supposing that I had been traveling ever since, and had now come round again.
Henry David ThoreauUnder the one word "house" are included the schoolhouse, the almshouse, the jail, the tavern, the dwellinghouse; and the meanest shed or cave in which men live contains elements of all these. But nowhere on the earth stands the entire and perfect house.
Henry David ThoreauA field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It is continually receiving new life and motion from above. It is intermediate in its nature between land and sky.
Henry David ThoreauI know that some will have hard thoughts of me, when they hear their Christ named beside my Buddha, yet I am sure that I am willing they should love their Christ more than my Buddha, for the love is the main thing, and I like him too.
Henry David ThoreauMake the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.
Henry David ThoreauThe earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit ~ not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic. Its throes will heave our exuviæ from their graves ... You may melt your metals and cast them into the most beautiful moulds you can; they will never excite me like the forms which this molten earth flows out into.
Henry David Thoreau