I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute Freedom and Wildness, as contrasted with a Freedom and Culture merely civil,… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
It is remarkable that among all the preachers there are so few moral teachers. The prophets are employed in excusing the ways… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
At present the globe goes with a shattered constitution in its orbit.... No doubt the simple powers of nature, properly directed by… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
It becomes the moralist, too, to inquire what man might do to improve and beautify the system; what to make the stars… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
A man's social and spiritual discipline must answer to his corporeal. He must lean on a friend who has a hard breast,… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself.” — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Strange that so few ever come to the woods to see how the pine lives and grows and spires, lifting its evergreen… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind. Some see only clouds there; some, prodigies and portents; some rarely… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The wildest dreams of wild men, even, are not the less true, though they may not recommend themselves to the sense which… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The mission of men there seems to be, like so many busy demons, to drive the forest all out of the country,… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Even in civilized communities, the embryo man passes through the hunter stage of development. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
By my intimacy with nature I find myself withdrawn from man. My interest in the sun and the moon, in the morning… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
A man might well pray that he may not taboo or curse any portion of nature by being buried in it. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Wherever you may seek solitude, men will ferret you out and compel you to belong to their desperate company of oddfellows. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if ten men whom I could name,--if ten honest men only,--ay,… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
If a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Whatever has not come under the sway of man is wild. In this sense original and independent men are wild - not… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Any man knows when he is justified, and all the wits in the world cannot enlighten him on that point. The murderer… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
A familiar name cannot make a man less strange to me. It may be given to a savage who retains in secret… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
We are apt to imagine that this hubbub of Philosophy, Literature, and Religion, which is heard in pulpits, lyceums, and parlors, vibrates… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these… — 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
The poet's body even is not fed like other men's, but he sometimes tastes the genuine nectar and ambrosia of the gods,… — 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
