We are double-edged blades, and every time we whet our virtue the return stroke straps our vice. Where is the skillful swordsman… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Left to herself, nature is always more or less civilized, and delights in a certain refinement; but where the axe has encroached… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
How can we remember our ignorance, which our growth requires, when we are using our knowledge all the time? — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
We say justly that the weak person is flat, for, like all flat substances, he does not stand in the direction of… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
But the divinest poem, or the life of a great man, is the severest satire.... The greater the genius, the keener the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
If you stand right fronting and face to face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces,… — 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
