Especially the transcendental philosophy needs the leaven of humor to render it light and digestible. — 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
Certainly, we do not need to be soothed and entertained always like children. He who resorts to the easy novel, because he… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Our bread need not ever be sour or hard to digest. What Nature is to the mind she is also to the… — 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
Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
You only need sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
We begin to praise when we begin to see a thing needs our assistance. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
To say that a man is your Friend, means commonly no more than this, that he is not your enemy. Most contemplate… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Man needs to know but little more than a lobster in order to catch him in his traps. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Ah! I need solitude. I have come forth to this hill at sunset to see the forms of the mountains in the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
There is no doubt that the loftiest written wisdom is either rhymed or in some way musically measured,--is, in form as well… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Why should not we, who have renounced the king's authority, have our national preserves, where no villages need be destroyed, in which… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only fact, or the description of one actual phenomenon, to infer… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Simplify your life. Don't waste the years struggling for things that are unimportant. Don't burden yourself with possessions. Keep your needs and… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Seeds, there are seeds enough which need only be stirred in with the soil where they lie, by an inspired voice or… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Paper is cheap, and authors need not now erase one book before they write another. Instead of cultivating the earth for wheat… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The wilderness is near as well as dear to every man. Even the oldest villages are indebted to the border of wild… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The fruits eaten temperately need not make us ashamed of our appetites, nor interrupt the worthiest pursuits. But put an extra condiment… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Probably if our lives were more conformed to nature, we should not need to defend ourselves against her heats and colds, but… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
We have need to be earth-born as well as heaven-born, gegeneis, as was said of the Titans of old, or in a… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
In our most trivial walks, we are constantly, though unconsciously, steering like pilots by certain well-known beacons and headlands, and if we… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
If you are describing any occurrence... make two or more distinct reports at different times... We discriminate at first only a few… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
When I go into a museum and see the mummies wrapped in their linen bandages, I see that the lives of men… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
East of my bean-field, across the road, lived Cato Ingraham, slave of Duncan Ingraham, Esquire, gentleman, of Concord village, whobuilt his slave… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
But what is quackery? It is commonly an attempt to cure the diseases of a man by addressing his body alone. There… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Nature is slow, but sure; she works no faster than need be; she is the tortoise that wins the race by her… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
We sometimes meet uncivil men, children of Amazons, who dwell by mountain paths, and are said to be inhospitable to strangers; whose… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I realized a school doesn't need a School Committee or Trustees or Governors or lumber or approved textbooks. All a school needs… — 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
All sensuality is one, though it takes many forms; all purity is one. It is the same whether a man eat, or… — 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
