You may raise enough money to tunnel a mountain, but you cannot raise money enough to hire a man who is minding his own business.
Henry David ThoreauI love you not as something private and personal, which is my own, but as something universal and worthy of love which I have found.
Henry David ThoreauIf I choose to devote myself to certain labors which yield more real profit, though but little money, they may be inclined to look on me as an idler.
Henry David ThoreauI see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born?
Henry David ThoreauMen do not fail commonly for want of knowledge, but for want of prudence to give wisdom the preference.
Henry David ThoreauThe animal merely makes a bed, which he warms with his body in a sheltered place; but man, having discovered fire, boxes up some air in a spacious apartment, and warms that, instead of robbing himself, makes that his bed, in which he can move about divested of more cumbrous clothing, maintain a kind of summer in the midst of winter, and by means of windows even admit the light and with a lamp lengthen out the day.
Henry David ThoreauOn the 31st of August, 1846, I left Concord in Massachusetts for Bangor and the backwoods of Maine,... I proposed to make excursions to Mount Ktaadn, the second highest mountain in New England, about thirty miles distant, and to some of the lakes of the Penobscot, either alone or with such company as I might pick up there.
Henry David ThoreauI was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a multitude? They can only force me who obey a higher law than I.... I do not hear of men being forced to live this way or that by masses of men. What sort of life were that to live?
Henry David ThoreauI have not yet learned to live, that I can see, and I fear that I shall not very soon. I find, however, that in the long run things correspond to my original idea,--that they correspond to nothing else so much; and thus a man may really be a true prophet without any great exertion. The day is never so dark, nor the night even, but that the laws at least of light still prevail, and so may make it light in our minds if they are open to the truth.
Henry David ThoreauOur own country furnishes antiquities as ancient and durable, and as useful, as any; rocks at least as well covered with lichens,and a soil which, if it is virgin, is but virgin mould, the very dust of nature. What if we cannot read Rome or Greece, Etruria or Carthage, or Egypt or Babylon, on these; are our cliffs bare?
Henry David ThoreauWe find it difficult to choose our direction because it does not yet exist distinctly in our idea.
Henry David ThoreauI have seen more men than usual, lately; and, well as I was acquainted with one, I am surprised to find what vulgar fellows they are.
Henry David ThoreauBehold the difference between the Oriental and the Occidental. The former has nothing to do in this world; the latter is full of activity. The one looks in the sun until his eyes are put out; the other follows him prone in his westward course.
Henry David ThoreauTalk of mysteries! — Think of our life in nature, — daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it, — rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! The actual world! The common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? Where are we?
Henry David ThoreauMen nowhere, east or west, live yet a natural life, round which the vine clings, and which the elm willingly shadows. Man would desecrate it by his touch, and so the beauty of the world remains veiled to him. He needs not only to be spiritualized, but naturalized, on the soil of earth.
Henry David ThoreauAll men are really most attracted by the beauty of plain speech, and they even write in a florid style in imitation of this. Theyprefer to be misunderstood rather than to come short of its exuberance.
Henry David ThoreauThere is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages.
Henry David ThoreauThe very uprightness of the pines and maples asserts the ancient rectitude and vigor of nature. Our lives need the relief of such a background, where the pine flourishes and the jay still screams.
Henry David ThoreauTo the virtuous man, the universe is the only sanctum sanctorum, and the penetralia of the temple are the broad noon of his existence.
Henry David ThoreauWe have built for this world a family mansion, and the next a family tomb. The best works of art are the expression of man's struggle to free himself from this condition, but the effect of our art is merely to make this low state comfortable and that higher state to be forgotten.
Henry David ThoreauThe fibers of all things have their tension and are strained like the strings of an instrument.
Henry David ThoreauYou must love the crust of the earth on which you dwell more than the sweet crust of any bread or cake. You must be able to extract nutriment out of a sand-heap. You must have so good an appetite as this, else you will live in vain
Henry David ThoreauNature is mythical and mystical always, and works with the license and extravagance of genius. She has her luxurious and florid style as well as art.
Henry David ThoreauThe study of geometry is a petty and idle exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger system than the starry one. Mathematics should be mixed not only with physics but with ethics; that is mixed mathematics.
Henry David ThoreauBut the eyes, though they are no sailors, will never be satisfied with any model, however fashionable, which does not answer all the requisitions of art.
Henry David ThoreauDon't spend your time in drilling soldiers, who may turn out hirelings after all, but give to undrilled peasantry a country to fight for.
Henry David ThoreauNot by constraint or severity shall you have access to true wisdom, but by abandonment, and childlike mirth-fulness. If you would know aught, be gay before it.
Henry David ThoreauWhen will the world learn that a million men are of no importance compared with one man?
Henry David ThoreauThere is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.
Henry David ThoreauEvery man who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best condition, has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food
Henry David ThoreauI suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.
Henry David ThoreauI quietly declare war with the State, after my fashion, though I will still make use and get advantage of her as I can, as is usual in such cases.
Henry David ThoreauThis whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments?
Henry David ThoreauPity the man who has a character to support - it is worse than a large family - he is silent poor indeed.
Henry David Thoreau