The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Comparatively, we can excuse any offense against the heart, but not against the imagination. The imagination knows--nothing escapes its glance from out… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
"Hear! hear!" screamed the jay from a neighboring tree, where I had heard a tittering for some time, "winter has a concentrated… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
That so many are ready to live by luck, and so get the means of commanding the labor of others less lucky,… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Do you know how the naturalist learns all the secrets of the forest, of plants, of birds, of beasts, of reptiles, of… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I fear that he who walks over these fields a century hence will not know the pleasure of knocking off wild apples.… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
It is not when I am going to meet him, but when I am just turning away and leaving him alone, that… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Some are "industrious," and appear to love labor for its own sake, or perhaps because it keeps them out of worse mischief;… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The most attractive sentences are, perhaps, not the wisest, but the surest and roundest. They are spoken firmly and conclusively, as if… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Literary gentlemen, editors, and critics think that they know how to write, because they have studied grammar and rhetoric; but they are… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison, the only house in… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
In the planting of the seeds of most trees, the best gardeners do no more than follow Nature, though they may not… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I do believe that the outward and the inward life correspond; that if any should succeed to live a higher life, others… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things,… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I have seen some who did not know when to turn aside their eyes in meeting yours. A truly confident and magnanimous… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
It is an unfortunate discovery certainly, that of a law which binds us where we did not know before that we were… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
A temple, you know, was anciently "an open place without a roof," whose walls served merely to shut out the world and… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I keep a mountain anchored off eastward a little way, which I ascend in my dreams both awake and asleep. Its broad… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Knowledge is to be acquired only by a corresponding experience. How can we know what we are told merely? Each man can… — 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
