A man will not need to study history to find out what is best for his own culture.
Henry David ThoreauNo man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes: 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.
Henry David ThoreauThere is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dullness.
Henry David ThoreauDo we call this the land of the free? What is it to be free from King George the Fourth and continue the slaves of prejudice? What is it to be born free and equal, and not to live? What is the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom?
Henry David ThoreauA true politeness does not result from any hasty and artificial polishing, it is true, but grows naturally in characters of the right grain and quality, through a long fronting of men and events, and rubbing on good and bad fortune.
Henry David ThoreauProbe the universe in a myriad of points. ... He is a wise man who has taken many views; to whom stones and plants and animals and a myriad of objects have each suggesting something, contributed something.
Henry David ThoreauI learned what it is to live in the open air, and I learned that our lives are domestic in more sense than we think.
Henry David ThoreauThe journalists think that they cannot say too much in favor of such "improvements" in husbandry; it is a safe theme, like piety;but as for the beauty of one of these "model farms," I would as lief see a patent churn and a man turning it. They are, commonly, places merely where somebody is making money, it may be counterfeiting.
Henry David ThoreauGive me a country where it is the most natural thing in the world for a government that does not understand you to let you alone.
Henry David ThoreauThe flowers of the apple are perhaps the most beautiful of any tree's, so copious and so delicious to both sight and scent.
Henry David ThoreauConsider the islands bearing the names of all the saints, bristling with forts like chestnut-burs, or Echinidæ, yet the police will not let a couple of Irishmen have a private sparring- match on one of them, as it is a government monopoly; all the great seaports are in a boxing attitude, and you must sail prudently between two tiers of stony knuckles before you come to feel the warmth of their breasts.
Henry David ThoreauSo behave that the odor of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere, that when we behold or scent a flower, we may not be reminded how inconsistent your deeds are with it; for all odor is but one form of advertisement of a moral quality, and if fair actions had not been performed, the lily would not smell sweet. The foul slime stands for the sloth and vice of man, the decay of humanity; the fragrant flower that springs from it, for the purity and courage which are immortal.
Henry David ThoreauI wished only to be set down in Canada, and take one honest walk there as I might in Concord woods of an afternoon.
Henry David ThoreauNothing more strikingly betrays the credulity of mankind than medicine. Quackery is a thing universal, and universally successful. In this case it becomes literally true that no imposition is too great for the credulity of men.
Henry David ThoreauLong as I have lived, and many blasphemers as I have heard and seen, I have never yet heard or witnessed any direct and consciousblasphemy or irreverence; but of indirect and habitual, enough. Where is the man who is guilty of direct and personal insolence to Him that made him?
Henry David ThoreauBooks are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind.
Henry David ThoreauThe inhabitants of Canada appeared to be suffering between two fires,--the soldiery and the priesthood.
Henry David ThoreauWhat is the singing of birds, or any natural sound, compared with the voice of one we love.
Henry David ThoreauIs the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man.
Henry David ThoreauIf Columbus was the first to discover the islands, Americus Vespucius and Cabot, and the Puritans, and we their descendants, havediscovered only the shores of America.
Henry David ThoreauNothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.
Henry David ThoreauArt is not tame, and Nature is not wild, in the ordinary sense. A perfect work of man's art would also be wild or natural in a good sense.
Henry David ThoreauYou must get your living by loving. But as it is said of the merchants that ninety-seven in a hundred fail, so the life of men generally, tried by this standard, is a failure, and bankruptcy may be surely prophesied.
Henry David ThoreauIn Homer and Chaucer there is more of the innocence and serenity of youth than in the more modern and moral poets. The Iliad is not Sabbath but morning reading, and men cling to this old song, because they still have moments of unbaptized and uncommitted life, which give them an appetite for more.
Henry David ThoreauThe universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to discuss the characters of individuals.
Henry David ThoreauI respect not his labors, his farm where everything has its price, who would carry the landscape, who would carry his God, to market, if he could get anything for him; who goes to market for his god as it is; on whose farm nothing grows free, whose fields bear no crops, whose meadows no flowers, whose trees no fruits, but dollars.
Henry David ThoreauThe whole of the day should not be daytime; there should be one hour, if not more, which the day did not bring forth.
Henry David ThoreauIt has been so written, for the most part, that the times it describes are with remarkable propriety called dark ages. They are dark, as one has observed, because we are so in the dark about them.
Henry David ThoreauFor most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it (life), whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to 'glorify God and enjoy him forever.'
Henry David ThoreauFor the most part we stupidly confound one man with another. The dull distinguish only races or nations, or at most classes, but the wise man, individuals.
Henry David ThoreauI make it my business to extract from Nature what ever nutriment she can furnish me.... I milk the sky and the earth.
Henry David ThoreauUnder a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.
Henry David ThoreauThe future is too soon the past. So make perseverance your excellence and go confidently in the direction of your dreams.
Henry David ThoreauA wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.
Henry David ThoreauA truly good book is something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild-flower discovered on the prairies of the West or in the jungles of the East.
Henry David ThoreauWhen the first light dawned on the earth, and the birds awoke, and the brave river was heard rippling confidently seaward, and the nimble early rising wind rustled the oak leaves about our tent, all people, having reinforced their bodies and their souls with sleep, and cast aside doubt and fear, were invited to unattempted adventures.
Henry David Thoreau