Every wild apple shrub excites our expectation thus, somewhat as every wild child. It is, perhaps, a prince in disguise. What a… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
In clear weather the laziest may look across the Bay as far as Plymouth at a glance, or over the Atlantic as… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
In my short experience of human life, the outward obstacles, if there were any such, have not been living men, but the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
When the true criminals are running around free, the only honorable place for a decent human being is in prisons. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I do not believe there are eight hundred human beings on the globe. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
There are various tough problems yet to solve, and we must shift to live, betwixt spirit and matter, such a human life… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I saw deep in the eyes of the animals the human soul look out upon me. I saw where it was born… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
In war, in some sense, lies the very genius of law. It is law creative and active; it is the first principle… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I am struck by the fact that the more slowly trees grow at first, the sounder they are at the core, and… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I wish my countrymen to consider that whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can ever commit… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
For my own part, I commonly attend more to nature than to man, but any affecting human event may blind our eyes… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
As I stand over the insect crawling amid the pine needles on the forest floor, and endeavoring to conceal itself from my… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Christ was a sublime actor on the stage of the world. He knew what he was thinking of when he said, "Heaven… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
We do not learn much from learned books, but from true, sincere, human books, from frank and honest biographies. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
What would human life be without forests, those natural cities? — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race in its gradual improvement, to leave off… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The oldest, wisest politician grows not more human so, but is merely a gray wharf rat at last. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I do not remember anything which Confucius has said directly respecting man's "origin, purpose, and destiny." He was more practical than that.… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Observation is so wide awake, and facts are being so rapidly added to the sum of human experience, that it appears as… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“No humane being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature, which holds its life by the same tenure… — 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
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
It often happens that a man develops a deeper love and friendship with his pet cat or dog than he does with… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the filed, but not to describe human character. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
True kindness is a pure divine affinity, Not founded upon human consanguinity. It is a spirit, not a blood relation, Superior to… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
It often happens that a man is more humanely related to a cat or dog than to any human being. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
No man in America has ever stood up so persistently and effectively for the dignity of human nature, knowing himself for a… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Unless the human race perspire more than I do, there is no occasion to live by the sweat of their brow. If… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
There is a higher law affecting our relation to pines as well as to men. A pine cut down, a dead pine,… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
He who is only a traveler learns things at second-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority. We are most interested… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Doubtless, we are as slow to conceive of Paradise as of Heaven, of a perfect natural as of a perfect spiritual world.… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
It is comparatively a faint and reflected beauty that is admired, not an essential and intrinsic one. It is because the old… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Who knows what the human body would expand and flow out to under a more genial heaven? — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
So our human life but dies down to its root, and still puts forth its green blade to eternity. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Those things which now most engage the attention of men, as politics and the daily routine, are, it is true, vital functions… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The sea, vast and wild as it is, bears thus the waste and wrecks of human art to its remotest shore. There… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I am struck by the fact that the more slowly trees grow at first, the sounder they are at the core, and… — 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
