Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau (see name pronunciation; July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862) was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, and historian. A leading transcendentalist, Thoreau is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay Resistance to Civil Government (also known as Civil Disobedience), an argument for disobedience to an unjust state.

“The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must the the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity.” Henry David Thoreau – Walden

“Why should we be in such a desperate haste to succeed, and in desperate enterprises? If a mand does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.” Henry David Thoreau – Walden

“To what end, pray, is so much stone hammered? In Arcadia, when I was there, I did not see any hammering stone. Nations are possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave. What if equal pains were taken to smooth and palish their manners?” Henry David Thoreau – Walden

“No wonder that Alexander carried the Iliad with him on his expeditions in a precious casket. A written word is the choicest of relics.” Henry David Thoreau – Walden

“Books ae the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.” Henry David Thoreau – Walden

“I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To being company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.” Henry David Thoreau – Walden

“An average house in this neighborhood costs perhaps eight hundred dollars, and to lay up tis sum will take from ten to fifteen years of the laborer’s life, even if he is not encumbered with family; estimating the pecuniary value of every man’s labor at one dollar a day, for is some receive more, others receive less; so that he must have spent more than half his life commonly before his wigwam will be earned. If we suppose him to pay a rend instead, this is but doubtful choice of evils. Would the savage have been wise to exchange his wigwam for a palace on these terms?” Henry David Thoreau – Walden

“One farmer says to me, “You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with;” and so he religiously devotes a of his day to supplying his sytem with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering lough along in spite of every obstacle.” Henry David Thoreau – Walden

“I see young men, by townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes that field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born?” Henry David Thoreau – Walden

“It is hard to have a southern overseer; it is worse to have a northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself.” Henry David Thoreau – Walden

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.” Henry David Thoreau – Walden

“The luxury of one class is counterbalanced by the indigence of another. On the one side is the palace, on the other are the almshouse and silent poor.” Henry David Thoreau – Walden

“I have traveled a good deal in Concord: and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways.” Henry David Thoreau – Walden

“When it comes time to die, let us not discover that we have never lived.”  Henry David Thoreau

“My greatest skill has been to want but little.” – Henry David Thoreau

“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” Henry David Thoreau

“I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.” Henry David Thoreau

“What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.” Henry David Thoreau

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.” Henry David Thoreau

“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.” Henry David Thoreau

“Our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify.” Henry David Thoreau

“I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.” Henry David Thoreau