Every wild apple shrub excites our expectation thus, somewhat as every wild child. It is, perhaps, a prince in disguise. What a… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Who knows what beautiful and winged life, whose egg has been buried for ages under many concretic layers of woodenness in the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Perfect alchemists I keep who can transmute substances without end, and thus the corner of my garden is an inexhaustible treasure-chest. Here… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by… — 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
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
I please myself with imagining a State at least which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Men talk of freedom! How many are free to think? Free from fear, from perturbation, from prejudice? Nine hundred and ninety-nine in… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
It would be worth the while to select our reading, for books are the society we keep; to read only the serenely… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Such is the never-failing beauty and accuracy of language, the most perfect art in the world; the chisel of a thousand years… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The true man of science will know nature better by his finer organization; he will smell, taste, see, hear, feel, better than… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Nature is a greater and more perfect art, the art of God; though, referred to herself, she is genius; and there is… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
One little bird not larger than a sparrow, it may have been a Phalarope, would alight on the turbulent surface where the… — 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
Under the one word "house" are included the schoolhouse, the almshouse, the jail, the tavern, the dwellinghouse; and the meanest shed or… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The hawk is aerial brother of the wave which he sails over and surveys, those his perfect air-inflated wings answering to the… — 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
We love to see any redness in the vegetation of the temperate zone. It is the color of colors. This plant speaks… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The Man of Genius may at the same time be, indeed is commonly, an Artist, but the two are not to be… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I bought me a spy-glass some weeks since. I buy but a few things, and those not till long after I begin… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
We say justly that the weak person is flat, for, like all flat substances, he does not stand in the direction of… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Perfect sincerity and transparency make a great part of beauty, as in dewdrops, lakes, and diamonds. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
You think that I am impoverishing myself withdrawing from men, but in my solitude I have woven for myself a silken web… — 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
