Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best,… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain,… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The wildest dreams of wild men, even, are not the less true, though they may not recommend themselves to the sense which… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Talk of mysteries! — Think of our life in nature, — daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it,… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
What is called common sense is excellent in its department, and as invaluable as the virtue of conformity in the army and… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
To some extent, mythology is only the most ancient history and biography. So far from being false or fabulous in the common… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
We perceive that the schemers return again and again to common sense and labor. Such is the evidence of history. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
It is always singular, but encouraging, to meet with common sense in very old books, as the Heetopades of Veeshnoo Sarma; a… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense? The commonest sense is the sense of men… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
If common sense had been consulted, how many marriages would never have taken place; if uncommon or divine sense, how few marriages… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
It is the characteristic of great poems that they will yield of their sense in due proportion to the hasty and the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
We believe that the possibility of the future far exceeds the accomplishment of the past. We review the past with the common… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
There is all the poetry in the world in a name. It is a poem which the mass of men hear and… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Many expressions in the New Testament come naturally to the lips of all Protestants, and it furnishes the most pregnant and practical… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
A man of rare common sense and directness of speech, as of action; a transcendentalist above all, a man of ideas and… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
My facts shall be falsehoods to the common sense. I would so state facts that they shall be significant, shall be myths… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
A true account of the actual is the rarest poetry, for common sense always takes a hasty and superficial view. — 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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
A traveler who looks at things with an impartial eye may see what the oldest inhabitant has not observed. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
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 Image
I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The still youthful energies of the globe have only to be directed in their proper channel. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
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 Image
