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
As for conforming outwardly, and living your own life inwardly, I do not think much of that. Let not your right hand… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
If I shall sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I'm sure that, for me, there… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The moles nested in my cellar, nibbling every third potato, and making a snug bed even there of some hair left after… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I rejoice that horses and steers have to be broken before they can be made the slaves of men, and that men… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
If we were left solely to the wordy wit of legislators in Congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonal experience and… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Science with its retorts would have put me to sleep; it was the opportunity to be ignorant that I improved. It suggested… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
When we come down into the distant village, visible from the mountain-top, the nobler inhabitants with whom we peopled it have departed,… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
To speak or do anything that shall concern mankind, one must speak and act as if well, or from that grain of… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
On the 31st of August, 1846, I left Concord in Massachusetts for Bangor and the backwoods of Maine,... I proposed to make… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Thus was my first year's life in the woods completed; and the second year was similar to it. I finally left Walden… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I should be glad if all the meadows on the earth were left in a wild state, if that were the consequence… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The most primitive places left with us are the swamps, where the spruce still grows shaggy with usnea. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
There have been some nations who could do nothing but construct tombs, and these are the only traces which they have left.… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I saw a delicate flower had grown up two feet high between the horses' feet and the wheel-track. Which Dakin's and Maynard's… — 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
