So soon did we, wayfarers, begin to learn that man's life is rounded with the same few facts, the same simple relations… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such. It is the bog in our… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
You must love the crust of the earth on which you dwell more than the sweet crust of any bread or cake.… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
It is worth the expense of youthful days and costly hours, if you learn only some words of an ancient language, which… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Nations! What are nations? Tartars! and Huns! and Chinamen! Like insects they swarm. The historian strives in vain to make them memorable.… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Philosophy, having crept clinging to the rocks so far, puts out its feelers many ways in vain. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I lately met with an old volume from a London bookshop, containing the Greek Minor Poets, and it was a pleasure to… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Did ever a man try heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no advantage in them - that it was… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Critical acumen is exerted in vain to uncover the past; the past cannot be presented; we cannot know what we are not.… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
It is not in vain that man speaks to man. This is the value of literature. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Each humblest plant, or weed, as we call it, stands there to express some thought or mood of ours; and yet how… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Each reaching and aspiration is an instinct with which all nature consists and cöoperates, and therefore it is not in vain. But… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
If the condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality which we can substitute? We… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
As far as our noblest hardwood forests are concerned, the animals, especially squirrels and jays, are our greatest and almost only benefactors.… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Did you ever hear of a man who had striven all his life faithfully and singly towards an object, and in no… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step… — 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
