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Henry David Thoreau Quotes - Page 22

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Poetry is the only life got, the only work done, the only pure product and free labor of man, performed only when he has put all the world under his feet, and conquered the last of his foes.

Poetry is the only life got, the only work done, the only pure product and free labor of man, performed only when he has put all the world under his feet, and conquered the last of his foes.

Henry David Thoreau
Men, Feet, Poetry
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.279, Simon and Schuster

It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience, but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience.

Henry David Thoreau
Men, Enough Said, Corporations
Henry David Thoreau (1942). “Civil Disobedience”, p.3, Hayes Barton Press

Nature refuses to sympathize with our sorrow. She seems not to have provided for, but by a thousand contrivances against it.

Henry David Thoreau
Nature, Sorrow, Environment
Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.17, Courier Corporation

What a fool he must be who thinks that his El Dorado is anywhere but where he lives.

Henry David Thoreau
Home, Thinking, Fool
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Familiar Letters (Annotated Edition)”, p.266, Jazzybee Verlag

Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams.

Henry David Thoreau
Love, Friendship, Best Friend

We rarely meet a man who can tell us any news which he has not read in a newspaper, or been told by his neighbor; and, for the most part, the only difference between us and our fellow is that he has seen the newspaper, or been out to tea, and we have not.

Henry David Thoreau
Men, Differences, Tea
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.416, Simon and Schuster

I do not value any view of the universe into which man and the institutions of man enter very largely and absorb much of the attention. Man is but the place where I stand, and the prospect hence is infinite.

Henry David Thoreau
Men, Views, Attention
Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.83, Courier Corporation

We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.

Henry David Thoreau
Communication, Texas, Important
Walden ch. 1 (1854)

Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.

Henry David Thoreau
Good Morning, Nature, Good Day
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.61, Graphic Arts Books

The true man of science will know nature better by his finer organization; he will smell, taste, see, hear, feel, better than other men. His will be a deeper and finer experience. We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy. It is with science as with ethics,--we cannot know truth by contrivance and method; the Baconian is as false as any other, and with all the helps of machinery and the arts, the most scientific will still be the healthiest and friendliest man, and possess a more perfect Indian wisdom.

Henry David Thoreau
Art, Philosophy, Feel Better
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Excursions (Annotated Edition)”, p.27, Jazzybee Verlag

Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society.

Henry David Thoreau
Life, Garden, Clothes
Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Walden”, p.212, Cosimo, Inc.

Men go back to the mountains, as they go back to sailing ships at sea, because in the mountains and on the sea they must face up.

Henry David Thoreau
Inspirational, Funny, Men

I was never molested by any person but those who represented the State. I had no lock nor bolt but for the desk which held my papers, not even a nail to put over my latch or windows. I never fastened my door night or day, though I was to be absent several days; not even when the next fall I spent a fortnight in the woods of Maine. And yet my house was more respected than if it had been surrounded by a file of soldiers.

Henry David Thoreau
Fall, Night, Jail
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.104, Simon and Schuster

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.

Henry David Thoreau
Inspirational, Cheating, Integrity
Henry David Thoreau, Barry Andrews (2005). “True Harvest: Readings from Henry David Thoreau for Every Day of the Year”, p.83, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations

If Nature is our mother, then God is our father.

Henry David Thoreau
God, Mother, Nature
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.265, Xist Publishing

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!

Henry David Thoreau
Simplicity
Henry David Thoreau (2006). “Thoreau and the Art of Life: Precepts and Principles”, p.74, Heron Dance Press

What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.

Henry David Thoreau
Inspirational, Life, Health
Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Thoreau on Nature: Sage Words on Finding Harmony with the Natural World”, p.10, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

Live in each season as it passes: breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit.

Henry David Thoreau
Life, Summer, July
Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.119, Courier Corporation

Of what use were it, pray, to get a little wood to burn, to warm your body this cold weather, if there were not a divine fire kindled at the same time to warm your spirit?

Henry David Thoreau
Weather, Fire, Littles
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.366, Penguin

Time cannot bend the line which God has writ.

Henry David Thoreau
Lines
Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1865). “Letters to Various Persons”, p.218

Friendship is evanescent in every man's experience, and remembered like heat lightning in past summers.

Henry David Thoreau
Friendship, Summer, Past
Henry David Thoreau (1873). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.278

. . . we should be men first, and subjects afterward.

Henry David Thoreau
Respect, Men, Firsts
Civil Disobedience (1849)

A taste for the beautiful is most cultivated out of doors

Henry David Thoreau
Beautiful, Doors, Taste
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “Walden”, p.29, Xist Publishing

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.

Henry David Thoreau
Art, Children, Believe
Henry David Thoreau (1906). “Walden: Or, Life in the Woods”

We need the tonic of the wilderness, to wade sometimes in the marsh where the bitten and the meadow hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.

Henry David Thoreau
Adventure, Smell, Needs

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