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bb2db6b
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He is blessed who is assured that the animal is dying out in him every day by day, and the divine being established.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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e5caf51
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The ways by which you may get your money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by which you earn money 'merely' is to be truly idle or worse. If the labourer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself.. If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure that for me there would be nothing left worth living for.. You must get your..
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Henry David Thoreau |
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c9153cc
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Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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462e53c
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It is not all books that are as dull as their readers. There are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand, would be more salutary than the morning or the spring to our lives, and possibly put a new aspect on the face of things for us. How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.
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words
literature
reading
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Henry David Thoreau |
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8d4cd78
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he rated it as a gain in coming to America, that here you could get tea, and coffee, and meat every day. But the only true America is that country where you are at liberty to pursue such a mode of life as may enable you to do without these, and where the state does not endeavor to compel you to sustain the slavery and war and other superfluous expenses which directly or indirectly result from the use of such things.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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fc4f981
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When formerly I was looking about to see what I could do for a living... I thought often and seriously of picking huckleberries; that surely I could do.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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5f10cc7
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To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exlcude yourself from the true enjoyment of it.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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f62aa0e
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The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let us spend our lives in conceiving then. The poet or the artist never yet had so fair and noble a design but some of his posterity at least could accomplish it.
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artists
poets
reality
life
walden
ideas
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Henry David Thoreau |
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a620a6f
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So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre.
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life
possibility
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Henry David Thoreau |
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5366360
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The stars are God's dreams, thoughts remembered in the silence of his night.
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henry david thoreau |
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db1c13f
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The virtues of a superior man are like the wind; the virtues of a common man are like the grass; the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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4f67416
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How can a man be satisfied to entertain an opinion merely, and enjoy it?
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Henry David Thoreau |
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b8e50cd
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We cannot see anything until we are possessed with the idea of it, take it into our heads, - and then we can hardly see anything else.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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7d6863a
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Some of you, we all know, are poor, find it hard to live, are sometimes, as it were, gasping for breath. I have no doubt that some of you who read this book are unable to pay for all the dinners which you have actually eaten, or for the coats and shoes which are fast wearing or are already worn out, and have come to this page to spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing your creditors of an hour. It is very evident what mean and sneaking lives..
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poor
working
saving
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Henry David Thoreau |
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08730f2
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Read not the Times. Read the Eternities. Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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291b907
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It is not all books that are as dull as their readers.
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words
literature
reading
perception
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Henry David Thoreau |
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b95fa2d
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It is a surprising and memorable, as well as valuable experience, to be lost in the woods any time. Often in a snow storm, even by day, one will come out upon a well-known road and yet find it impossible to tell which way leads to the village. Though he knows that he has travelled it a thousand times, he cannot recognize a feature in it, but it is as strange to him as if it were a road in Siberia. By night, of course, the perplexity is infi..
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Henry David Thoreau |
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afac99e
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If a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.
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nature
productivity
nature-s-beauty
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Henry David Thoreau |
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b4574be
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You shall see rude and sturdy, experienced and wise men, keeping their castles, or teaming up their summer's wood, or chopping alone in the woods, men fuller of talk and rare adventure in the sun and wind and rain, than a chestnut is of meat; who were out not only in '75 and 1812, but have been out every day of their lives; greater men than Homer, or Chaucer, or Shakespeare, only they never got time to say so; they never took to the way of ..
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nature
work
inspirational-life
transcendence
life-philosophy
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Henry David Thoreau |
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7581106
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There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. I
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Henry David Thoreau |
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8c00253
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Pursue, keep up with, circle round and round your life, as a dog does his master's chaise. Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.
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living
life
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Henry David Thoreau |
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0cc20be
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The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get "a good job," but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it."
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Henry David Thoreau |
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a4fb8e5
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government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe--"That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have." --
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Henry David Thoreau |
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a754f97
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the state never intentionally confronts a man's sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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3b64da9
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Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate. Viesoji nuomone - ne toks baisus tironas kaip savoji. Tai, ka zmogus galvoja apie save, kaip tik ir lemia arba greiciau rodo jo likima.
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what-a-man-thinks-of-himself
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Henry David Thoreau |
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c1e0ab2
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How many a poor immortal soul have I met well-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its Augean stables never cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, tillage, mowing, pasture, and wood-lot. The portionless, who struggle with no such unnecessary inherited encumbrances, find it labor enough to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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158ddab
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No humane being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature, which holds its life by the same tenure that he does.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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9fc64c3
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A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts. We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call our duty. We loiter in winter while it is ..
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Henry David Thoreau |
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506a191
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That man who does not believe that each day contains an earlier, more sacred, and auroral hour than he has yet profaned, has despaired of life, and is pursuing a descending and darkening way.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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0a17ba4
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Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the rails. Let us rise early and fast, or break fast, gently and without perturbation; let company come and let company go, let the bells ring and the children cry, -- determined to make a day of it. Why should we knock under and go with the stream? Let us not be upset and overwhelmed in that terrible rapid and..
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time
nature
simplicity-in-life
simplicity
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Henry David Thoreau |
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472c0ad
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What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen?
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zen
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Henry David Thoreau |
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82664d4
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The spruce and cedar on its shores, hung with gray lichens, looked at a distance like the ghosts of trees. Ducks were sailing here and there on its surface, and a solitary loon, like a more living wave, -- a vital spot on the lake's surface, -- laughed and frolicked, and showed its straight leg, for our amusement.
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philosophy
wildlife
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Henry David Thoreau |
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b2a603a
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I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government.
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politics
government
protest
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Henry David Thoreau |
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a7e7f90
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Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men, generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is w..
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Henry David Thoreau |
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4c0a9de
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Man is an animal who more than any other can adapt himself to all climates and circumstances.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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ff2eecd
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One little chore to do, one little commission to fulfil, one message to carry, would spoil heaven itself.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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ae2720f
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I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a passtime, if we live simply and wisely
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Henry David Thoreau |
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5519433
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There is a difference between eating and drinking for strength and from mere gluttony.
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food
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Henry David Thoreau |
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ca0d2a2
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With what infinite & unwearied expectation and proclamations the cocks usher in every dawn, as if there had never been one before.
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nature
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Henry David Thoreau |
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25f19a0
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Men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men.
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freedom
livestock
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Henry David Thoreau |
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13bb670
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I cannot believe that our factory system is the best mode by which men may get clothing. The condition of the operatives is becoming every day more like that of the English; and it cannot be wondered at, since, as far as I have heard or observed, the principal object is, not that mankind may be well and honestly clad, but, unquestionably, that corporations may be enriched. In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though the..
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Henry David Thoreau |
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42fdbfd
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A man thinking or working will always be alone, let him be where he will.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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ebd3000
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The impression made on a wise man is that of universal innocence. Poison is not poisonous after all, nor are any wounds fatal. Compassion is a very untenable ground. It must be expeditious. Its pleadings will not bear to be stereotyped.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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75a08af
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A traveller! I love his title. A traveler is to be reverenced as such. His profession is the best symbol of our life. Going from-toward; it is the history of every one of us.
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Henry David Thoreau |