“This spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I walk out into a nature such as the old prophets and poets Menu, Moses, Homer, Chaucer, walked in. You may name… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The best poets, after all, exhibit only a tame and civil side of nature. They have not seen the west side of… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
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
When I stand in a library where is all the recorded wit of the world, but none of the recording, a mere… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I have made a very rude translation of the Seven against Thebes, and Pindar too I have looked at, and wish 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
Exaggerated history is poetry, and truth referred to a new standard. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The poet's, commonly, is not a logger's path, but a woodman's. The logger and pioneer have preceded him, like John the Baptist;… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
A township where one primitive forest waves above while another primitive forestrots below,such a town is fitted to raise not only corn… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
But there are spirits of a yet more liberal culture, to whom no simplicity is barren. There are not only stately pines,… — 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
I know very well what Goethe meant when he said that he never had a chagrin but he made a poem out… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I foresee the time when the painter will paint that scene, no longer going to Rome for a subject; the poet will… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
If you would get money as a writer or lecturer, you must be popular, which is to go down perpendicularly.... You are… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Each reader discovers for himself that, with respect to the simpler features of nature, succeeding poets have done little else than copy… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The genuine remains of Ossian, or those ancient poems which bear his name, though of less fame and extent, are, in many… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I thought, as I have my living to get, and have not eaten today, that I might go a- fishing. That's the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
A farmer, a hunter, a soldier, a reporter, even a philosopher, may be daunted; but nothing can deter a poet, for he… — 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
Nature doth thus kindly heal every wound. By the mediation of a thousand little mosses and fungi, the most unsightly objects become… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Color, which is the poet's wealth, is so expensive that most take to mere outline sketches and become men of science. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The night in prison was novel and interesting enough.... I found that even here there was a history and a gossip which… — 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
The great poem must have the stamp of greatness as well as its essence. — 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