How often, when we have been nearest each other bodily, have we really been farthest off! Our tongues were the witty foils… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
My days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Who knows what beautiful and winged life, whose egg has been buried for ages under many concretic layers of woodenness in the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Rivers must have been the guides which conducted the footsteps of the first travelers. They are the constant lure, when they flow… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The forests are held cheap after the white pine has been culled out; and the explorers and hunters pray for rain only… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
They who have been bred in the school of politics fail nowand always to face the facts. Their measures are half measures… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The world, which the Greeks called Beauty, has been made such by being gradually divested of every ornament which was not fitted… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
A noble person confers no such gift as his whole confidence: none so exalts the giver and the receiver; it produces the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
When I consider that the noble animals have been exterminated here - the cougar, panther, lynx, wolverine, wolf, bear, moose, deer, the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The natural historian is not a fisherman who prays for cloudy days and good luck merely; but as fishing has been styled… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Fishing has been styled 'a contemplative man's recreation,' ... and science is only a more contemplative man's recreation. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
As for fowling, during the last years that I carried a gun my excuse was that I was studying ornithology, and sought… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Every man who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best condition, has been particularly inclined… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I fear chiefly lest my expression may not be extravagant enough, may not wander far enough beyond the narrow limit of my… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The chief want, in every state that I have been into, was a high and earnest purpose in its inhabitants. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I find that the respectable man, so called, has immediately drifted from his position, and despairs of his country, when his country… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I have been breaking silence these twenty-three years and have hardly made a rent in it. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I think it will be found that he who speaks with most authority on a given subject is not ignorant of what… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
There have been heroes for whom this world seemed expressly prepared, as if creation had at last succeeded; whose daily life was… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The civilized nations--Greece, Rome, England--have been sustained by the primitive forests which anciently rotted where they stand. They survive as long as… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Nature has taken more care than the fondest parent for the education and refinement of her children. Consider the silent influencewhich flowers… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
One little bird not larger than a sparrow, it may have been a Phalarope, would alight on the turbulent surface where the… — 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
