177 Famous Quotes by Henry David Thoreau
7/12/1817 - 5/6/1862
Also Known As:
Henry Thoreau
Thoreau
Thoreau, Henry David
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About Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was an American author, naturalist, transcendentalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, sage writer and philosopher. He is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry total over 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions were his writings on natural history and philosophy, where he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern day environmentalism.He was a lifelong abolitionist, delivering lectures that attacked the Fugitive Slave Law while praising the writings of Wendell Phillips and defending abolitionist John Brown. Thoreau's philosophy of civil disobedience influenced the political thoughts and actions of such later figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr.Thoreau is sometimes cited as an individualist anarchist as well as an inspiration to anarchists. Though Civil Disobedience calls for improving rather than abolishing government: "I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government" the direction of this improvement aims at anarchism: "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."
You must not know too much or be too precise or scientific about birds and trees and flowers and watercraft; a certain free-margin, and even vagueness - ignorance, credulity - helps your enjoyment of these things.
Nature
Quotes, by Henry David Thoreau
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I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech-tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines.
Nature
Quotes, by Henry David Thoreau
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Public opinion is a weak tyrant, compared with our private opinion--what a man thinks of himself, that is which determines, or rather indicates his fate.
Opinion
Quotes, by Henry David Thoreau
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It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.
Rank
Quotes, by Henry David Thoreau
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Light Winged Smoke
Lightwinged Smoke, Icarian bird,
Melting thy pinions in thy upward flight,
Lark without song, and the messenger of dawn,
Circling above the hamlets as thy nest;
Or else, departing dream, and shadowy form
Of midnight vision, gathering up thy skirts;
By night star-veiling, and by day
Darkening the light and blotting out the sun;
Go thou my incense upward from this hearth,
And ask the gods to pardon this clear flame.
-Henry David Thoreau-.
Reverie
Quotes, by Henry David Thoreau
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Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have even lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor. -Henry David Thoreau.
Simplicity
Quotes, by Henry David Thoreau
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