What is the singing of birds, or any natural sound, compared with the voice of one we love. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
What would human life be without forests, those natural cities? — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.” — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
As in many countries precious metals belong to the crown, so here more precious natural objects of rare beauty should belong to… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Inexpressibly beautiful appears the recognition by man of the least natural fact, and the allying his life to it. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Art is not tame, and Nature is not wild, in the ordinary sense. A perfect work of man's art would also be… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Having reached the term of his natural life"; Mwould it not be truer to say, Having reached the term of his unnatural… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
It is impossible to give a soldier a good education without making him a deserter. His natural foe is the government that… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Individuals, like nations, must have suitable broad and natural boundaries, even a considerable neutral ground, between them. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
How important is a constant intercourse with nature and the contemplation of natural phenomena to the preservation of moral and intellectual health! — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Men nowhere, east or west, live yet a natural life, round which the vine clings, and which the elm willingly shadows. Man… — 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
Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. It is astonishing how few… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
When I hear the hypercritical quarreling about grammar and style, the position of the particles, etc., etc... I see that they forget… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Rivers must have been the guides which conducted the footsteps of the first travelers. They are the constant lure, when they flow… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
To him whom contemplates a trait of natural beauty, no harm nor despair can come. The doctrines of despair, spiritual or political… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
It is true, we are such poor navigators that our thoughts, for the most part, stand off and on upon a harborless… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Commerce is unexpectedly confident and serene, alert, adventurous, and unwearied. It is very natural in its methods withal, far more so than… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I have heard of a man lost in the woods and dying of famine and exhaustion at the foot of a tree,… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
For my part, I feel that with regard to Nature I live a sort of border life, on the confines of a… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Books of natural history make the most cheerful winter reading. I read in Audubon with a thrill of delight, when the snow… — 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
Is not the midnight like Central Africa to most of us? Are we not tempted to explore it,--to penetrate to the shores… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best,… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Perchance, coming generations will not abide the dissolution of the globe, but, availing themselves of future inventions in aerial locomotion, and the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I think that the farmer displaces the Indian even because he redeems the meadow, and so makes himself stronger and in some… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Unto a life which I call natural I would gladly follow even a will-o'-the-wisp through bogs and sloughs unimaginable, but no moonnor… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
A truly good book is something as wildly natural and primitive, mysterious and marvelous, ambrosial and fertile as a fungus or a… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Give me a country where it is the most natural thing in the world for a government that does not understand you… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
A truly good book is something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild-flower discovered on the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain,… — 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
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
Friendship takes place between those who have an affinity for one another, and is a perfectly natural and inevitable result. No professions… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
All the moral laws are readily translated into natural philosophy, for often we have only to restore the primitive meaning of thewords… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The hounding of a dog pursuing a fox or other animal in the horizon may have first suggested the notes of the… — 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
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
“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
“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
“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
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
A traveler who looks at things with an impartial eye may see what the oldest inhabitant has not observed. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share
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
I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share
The still youthful energies of the globe have only to be directed in their proper channel. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share
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
The lumberers rarely trouble themselves to put out their fires, such is the dampness of the primitive forest; and this is one cause, no… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share
“When he has obtained those things which are necessary to life, there is another alternative than to obtain the superfluities; and that is, to… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share
Wealth is measured by the level of experience in all aspects of life — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share
