Henry David Thoreau Quotations
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Henry David Thoreau
1817-1862 (Age at death: 45 approx.)
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.
Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry total over 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions are 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. His literary style interweaves close natural observation, personal experience, pointed rhetoric, symbolic meanings, and historical lore, while displaying a poetic sensibility, philosophical austerity, and "Yankee" love of practical detail. He was also deeply interested in the idea of survival in the face of hostile elements, historical change, and natural decay; at the same time he advocated abandoning waste and illusion in order to discover life's true essential needs.
Author Information from Wikipedia
54 Quotation(s) Total:
Page 3 of 3
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The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star. |
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| Henry David Thoreau | |
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The millions are awake enough for physical labor, but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only on in a hundred million to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. |
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| Henry David Thoreau | |
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The ways in which most men get their living, that is, live, are mere makeshifts, and a shirking of the real business of life-- chiefly because they do not know , but partly because the do not mean, any better. |
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| Henry David Thoreau | |
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There are as many strata at different levels of life as there are leaves in a book. Most men probably have lived in two or three. When on the higher levels we can remember the lower levels, but when on the lower we cannot remember the higher. |
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| Henry David Thoreau | |
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There is always some accident in the best things, whether thoughts or expressions or deeds. The memorable thought, the happy expression, the admirable deed are only partly ours. |
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| Henry David Thoreau | |
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Though my life is low, if my spirit looks upward habitually at an elevated angle, it is as if it were redeemed. When the desire to be better than we are is really sincere we are instantly elevated, and so far better already. |
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| Henry David Thoreau | |
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To see wild life you must go forth at wild season. |
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| Henry David Thoreau | |
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We are acquainted with a mere pellicle of the globe on which we live. Most have not delved six feet beneath the surface, nor leaped as many above it. We know not where we are. Beside, we are sound asleep nearly half our time. |
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| Henry David Thoreau | |
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We begin to die not in our sense or extremities, but in our divine faculties. |
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| Henry David Thoreau | |
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We live but a fraction of our life. |
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| Henry David Thoreau | |
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We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake." |
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| Henry David Thoreau | |
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Why level down to our dullest perception, always, and praise that as common sense? The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring. |
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| Henry David Thoreau | |
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Woe be to the generation that lets any higher faculty in its midst go unemployed. |
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| Henry David Thoreau | |
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Work your vein till it is exhausted, or conducts you to a broader one. |
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| Henry David Thoreau | |
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