We shall be reduced to gnaw the very crust of the earth for nutriment. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buries itself alive. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
For if we take the ages into our account, may there not be a civilization going on among brutes as well as… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
In civilization, as in a southern latitude, man degenerates at length, and yields to the incursion of more northern tribes. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The chickadee and nuthatch are more inspiring society than statesmen and philosophers, and we shall return to these last as to more… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them” — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
It [is of] some advantage to live a primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization, if only… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
If I thought that I could speak with discrimination and impartiality of the nations of Christendom, I should praise them, but it… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Nations are possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave. What… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
But the place which you have selected for your camp, though never so rough and grim, begins at once to have its… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
And if the civilized man's pursuits are no worthier than the savage's, if he is employed the greater part of his life… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“Thus the great civilizer sends out its emissaries, sooner or later, to every sandy cape and light-house of the New World which… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The poet's, commonly, is not a logger's path, but a woodman's. The logger and pioneer have preceded him, like John the Baptist;… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
How far men go for the material of their houses! The inhabitants of the most civilized cities, in all ages, send into… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“I love even to see the domestic animals reassert their native rights — any evidence that they have not wholly lost their… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Compared with this simple, fibrous life, our civilized history appears the chronicle of debility, of fashion, and the arts of luxury. But… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The village is the place to which the roads tend, a sort of expansion of the highway, as a lake of a… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
See yonder thin column of smoke curling up through the woods from some invisible farmhouse, the standard raised over some rural homestead…… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I rejoice that horses and steers have to be broken before they can be made the slaves of men, and that men… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
If it is asserted that civilization is a real advance in the condition of man,--and I think that it is, though only… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Bankruptcy and repudiation are the springboards from which much of our civilization vaults and turns its somersets, but the savagestands on the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
There may be an excess of cultivation as well as of anything else, until civilization becomes pathetic. A highly cultivated man,--all whose… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Within the memory of many of my townsmen the road near which my house stands resounded with the laugh and gossip of… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
If ever I did a man any goodof course it was something exceptional and insignificant compared with the good or evil which I am… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share
Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share
“Men say they know many things; But lo! they have taken wings, — The arts and sciences, And a thousand appliances; The wind that… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share
“All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or back gammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share
“This spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share
As for doing good; that is one of the professions which is full. Moreover I have tried it fairly and, strange as it may… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share
A traveler who looks at things with an impartial eye may see what the oldest inhabitant has not observed. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share
In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post office. You may depend on it, that the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share
I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share
The still youthful energies of the globe have only to be directed in their proper channel. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share
Concord's little arch does not span all our fate, nor is what transpires under it law for the universe. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share
The lumberers rarely trouble themselves to put out their fires, such is the dampness of the primitive forest; and this is one cause, no… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share
“When he has obtained those things which are necessary to life, there is another alternative than to obtain the superfluities; and that is, to… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share
Wealth is measured by the level of experience in all aspects of life — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share
![“It [is of] some advantage to live a primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization, if only to learn what are the gross necessities of life.” quote by Henry David Thoreau](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/9b5/henry-david-thoreau-20_advantage_it-is-of-some-advantage-to-live-a-primit_2761655.jpg)
