Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The culture of the hop ... so analagous to the culture and uses of the grape, may afford a theme for future poets. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I learned from my two years' experience that it would cost incredibly little trouble to obtain one's necessary food; that a man… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Of what use the friendliest disposition even, if there are no hours given to Friendship, if it is forever postponed to unimportant… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
For one that comes with a pencil to sketch or sing, a thousand come with an axe or rifle. What a coarse… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I love my friends very much, but I find that it is of no use to go to see them. I hate… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The true finish is the work of time, and the use to which a thing is put. The elements are still polishing… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I quietly declare war with the State, after my fashion, though I will still make use and get advantage of her as… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Of course it is of no use to direct our steps to the woods, if they do not carry us thither. I… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Already nature is serving all those uses which science slowly derives on a much higher and grander scale to him that will… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
If there were one who lived wholly without the use of money, the State itself would hesitate to demand it of him.… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
How far men go for the material of their houses! The inhabitants of the most civilized cities, in all ages, send into… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
There may be something petty in a refined taste; it easily degenerates into effeminacy. It does not consider the broadest use. It… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I also have in mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
There is such a thing as caste, even in the West; but it is comparatively faint; it is conservatism here. It says,… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
It is rare that we use our thinking faculty as resolutely as an irishman his spade. To please our friends and relatives… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
An Englishman, methinks,--not to speak of other European nations,--habitually regards himself merely as a constituent part of theEnglish nation; he is a… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The woodchopper reads the wisdom of the ages recorded on the paper that holds his dinner, then lights his pipe with it.… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods: what would become of us, if we walked only in a… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Who cares what a man's style is, so it is intelligible,--as intelligible as his thought. Literally and really, the style is no… — 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
I am a good horse to travel, but not from choice a roadster. The landscape-painter uses the figures of men to mark… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
First, there is the power of the Wind, constantly exerted over the globe... Here is an almost incalculable power at our disposal,… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The imagination never forgets; it is a re-membering. It is not foundationless, but most reasonable, and it alone uses all the knowledge… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Of what use were it, pray, to get a little wood to burn, to warm your body this cold weather, if there… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
In the mythus a superhuman intelligence uses the unconscious thoughts and dreams of men as its hieroglyphics to address men unborn. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“Whether he sleeps or wakes, whether he runs or walks, whether he uses a microscope or a telescope, or his naked eye,… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I think that every town should have a park, or rather a primitive forest, of five hundred or a thousand acres, either… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
To what end do I lead a simple life at all, pray? That I may teach others to simplify their lives? -… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Once I went so far as to slaughter a woodchuck which ravaged my bean-field,--effect his transmigration, as a Tartar would say,--and devour… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Indeed, the best books have a use, like sticks and stones, which is above or beside their design, not anticipated in the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Nature would not appear so rich, the profusion so rich, if we knew a use for everything. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Where the citizen uses a mere sliver or board, the pioneer uses the whole trunk of a tree. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The ears were made, not for such trivial uses as men are wont to suppose, but to hear celestial sounds. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The poet uses the results of science and philosophy, and generalizes their widest deductions. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I now first began to inhabit my house, I may say, when I began to use it for warmth as well as… — 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
