“The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, or philosophy,… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Exaggerated history is poetry, and truth referred to a new standard. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
While the Republic has already acquired a history world-wide, America is still unsettled and unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I found that they knew but little of the history of their race, and could be entertained by stories about their ancestors… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The Xanthus or Scamander is not a mere dry channel and bed of a mountain torrent, but fed by the ever-flowing springs… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
If we will admit time into our thoughts at all, the mythologies, those vestiges of ancient poems, wrecks of poems, so to… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“The whole course of human history may depend on a change of heart in a single, solitary, even humble individual. For it… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God's property, by some clerk. They do not in… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I foresee the time when the painter will paint that scene, no longer going to Rome for a subject; the poet will… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“As yesterday and the historical ages are past, as the work of today is present, so some flitting perspectives and demi-experiences of… — 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
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
We go eastward to realize history and study the works of art and literature, retracingthe steps of the race; we go westward… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
There are secret articles in our treaties with the gods, of more importance than all the rest, which the historian can never… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Nations! What are nations? Tartars! and Huns! and Chinamen! Like insects they swarm. The historian strives in vain to make them memorable.… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The night in prison was novel and interesting enough.... I found that even here there was a history and a gossip which… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
There has always been the same amount of light in the world. The new and missing stars, the comets and eclipses, do… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“We go eastward to realize history, and study the works of art and literature, retracing the steps of the race; we go… — 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
