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Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau

Essayist, Poet, Philosopher, Critic, Historian

(1817 - 1862)

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Henry David Thoreau

Essayist, Poet, Philosopher, Critic, Historian

Be it life or death, we crave only reality.
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Henry David Thoreau

Essayist, Poet, Philosopher, Critic, Historian

The Fitchburg Railroad touches the pond about a hundred rods south of where I dwell. I usually go to the village along its causeway, and am, as it were, related to society by this link. The men on the freight trains, who go over the whole length of the road, bow to me as to an old acquaintance, they pass me so often, and apparently they take me for an employee; and so I am. I too would fain be a track-repairer somewhere in the orbit of the earth.
Earth - Employment - Man - Whole
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Henry David Thoreau

Essayist, Poet, Philosopher, Critic, Historian

Always the laws of light are the same, but the modes and degrees of seeing vary.
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Henry David Thoreau

Essayist, Poet, Philosopher, Critic, Historian

By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences; and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent.
Actions - Consciousness - Mindset
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Henry David Thoreau

Essayist, Poet, Philosopher, Critic, Historian

Fame itself is but an epitaph; as late, as false, as true.
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Henry David Thoreau

Essayist, Poet, Philosopher, Critic, Historian

If you would get money as a writer or lecturer, you must be popular, which is to go down perpendicularly.... You are paid for being something less than a man. The state does not commonly reward a genius any more wisely. Even the poet laureate would rather not have to celebrate the accidents of royalty. He must be bribed with a pipe of wine; and perhaps another poet is called away from his muse to gauge that very pipe.
Accident - Celebration - Man - Poetry - Reward - State
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Henry David Thoreau

Essayist, Poet, Philosopher, Critic, Historian

I would that our farmers when they cut down a forest felt some of that awe which the old Romans did when they came to thin, or letin the light to, a consecrated grove (lucum conlucare), that is, would believe that it is sacred to some god. The Roman made an expiatory offering, and prayed, Whatever god or goddess thou art to whom this grove is sacred, be propitious to me, my family, and children, etc.
Belief - Farming - Feelings - Making
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Henry David Thoreau

Essayist, Poet, Philosopher, Critic, Historian

Enthusiasm is a supernatural serenity.
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Henry David Thoreau

Essayist, Poet, Philosopher, Critic, Historian

In our most trivial walks, we are constantly, though unconsciously, steering like pilots by certain well-known beacons and headlands, and if we go beyond our usual course we still carry in our minds the bearing of some neighboring cape; and not till we are completely lost, or turned round,--for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost,--do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature.
Certainty - Knowledge - Loss - Man - Mindset - Pilot - Wellness
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Henry David Thoreau

Essayist, Poet, Philosopher, Critic, Historian

Already nature is serving all those uses which science slowly derives on a much higher and grander scale to him that will be served by her. When the sunshine falls on the path of the poet, he enjoys all those pure benefits and pleasures which the arts slowly and partially realize from age to age. The winds which fan his cheek waft him the sum of that profit and happiness which their lagging inventions supply.
Enjoying - Fall - Poetry - Realization
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Henry David Thoreau

Essayist, Poet, Philosopher, Critic, Historian

I am accustomed to think very long of going anywhere,--am slow to move. I hope to hear a response of the oracle first.
Movement
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Henry David Thoreau

Essayist, Poet, Philosopher, Critic, Historian

Good for the body is the work of the body, good for the soul the work of the soul, and good for either the work of the other.
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Henry David Thoreau

Essayist, Poet, Philosopher, Critic, Historian

I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.
Crowd
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Henry David Thoreau

Essayist, Poet, Philosopher, Critic, Historian

As all curves have reference to their centres or foci, so all beauty of character has reference to the soul, and is a graceful gesture of recognition or waving of the body toward it.
Gesture
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Henry David Thoreau

Essayist, Poet, Philosopher, Critic, Historian

Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted or enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles.
Enterprising - Feelings - Man
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Henry David Thoreau

Essayist, Poet, Philosopher, Critic, Historian

I have myself to respect, but to myself I am not amiable; but my friend is my amiableness personified.
Amity - Friendship
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Henry David Thoreau

Essayist, Poet, Philosopher, Critic, Historian

To preserve wild animals implies generally the creation of a forest for them to dwell in or resort to. So it is with man. A hundred years ago they sold bark in our streets peeled from our own woods. In the very aspect of those primitive and rugged trees there was, methinks, a tanning principle which hardened and consolidated the fibres of men's thoughts. Ah! already I shudder for these comparatively degenerate days of my native village, when you cannot collect a load of bark of good thickness, and we no longer produce tar and turpentine.
Animals - Creativity - Decay - Man - Principle - Production
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Henry David Thoreau

Essayist, Poet, Philosopher, Critic, Historian

Morning work! By the blushes of Aurora and the music of Memnon, what should be man's morning work in this world?
Man - Mornings
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Henry David Thoreau

Essayist, Poet, Philosopher, Critic, Historian

History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning ofthings, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,--when did burdock and plantain sprout first?
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Henry David Thoreau

Essayist, Poet, Philosopher, Critic, Historian

It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.
Ability - Glory - Humor - Objectification - Painting
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Henry David Thoreau

Essayist, Poet, Philosopher, Critic, Historian

Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and whittled them.
Wellness
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Henry David Thoreau

Essayist, Poet, Philosopher, Critic, Historian

If rightly made, a boat would be a sort of amphibious animal, a creature of two elements, related by one half its structure to some swift and shapely fish, and by the other to some strong-winged and graceful bird.
Animals - Creativity - Making - Strength
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Henry David Thoreau

Essayist, Poet, Philosopher, Critic, Historian

I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.
Animals - Distinction - Feelings - Gardening
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Henry David Thoreau

Essayist, Poet, Philosopher, Critic, Historian

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all that was not life.
Living - Wants
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Henry David Thoreau

Essayist, Poet, Philosopher, Critic, Historian

I suppose that the great questions of "Fate, Freewill, Foreknowledge Absolute," which used to be discussed at Concord, are still unsettled.
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Henry David Thoreau

Essayist, Poet, Philosopher, Critic, Historian

A truly good book is something as wildly natural and primitive, mysterious and marvelous, ambrosial and fertile as a fungus or a lichen.
Fertility - Marvel - Mystery
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Henry David Thoreau

Essayist, Poet, Philosopher, Critic, Historian

He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise.
Savor
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Henry David Thoreau

Essayist, Poet, Philosopher, Critic, Historian

Treat your friends for what you know them to be. Regard no surfaces. Consider not what they did, but what they intended.
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Henry David Thoreau

Essayist, Poet, Philosopher, Critic, Historian

The Indian navigator naturally distinguishes by a name those parts of a stream where he has encountered quick water and forks, andagain, the lakes and smooth water where he can rest his weary arms, since those are the most interesting and more arable parts to him.
India - Weariness
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Henry David Thoreau

Essayist, Poet, Philosopher, Critic, Historian

The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles! What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment!
Contemplation
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Henry David Thoreau

Essayist, Poet, Philosopher, Critic, Historian

A regular council was held with the Indians, who had come in on their ponies, and speeches were made on both sides through an interpreter, quite in the described mode,--the Indians, as usual, having the advantage in point of truth and earnestness, and therefore of eloquence. The most prominent chief was named Little Crow. They were quite dissatisfied with the white man's treatment of them, and probably have reason to be so.
Earnest - Interpretation - Making - Man - Speaking
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Henry David Thoreau

Essayist, Poet, Philosopher, Critic, Historian

The Grecian are youthful and erring and fallen gods, with the vices of men, but in many important respects essentially of the divine race.
Fall - Man
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