Henry David Thoreau Quotes - Page 4

He who hears the rippling of rivers in these degenerate days will not utterly despair.

Men say they know many things;
But lo! they have taken wings, -
The arts and sciences,
And a thousand appliances;
The wind that blows
Is all that any body knows

Commonly men will only be brave as their fathers were brave, or timid.

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.

The perception of beauty is a moral test.

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.

The true price of anything you do is the amount of time you exchange for it.

Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.

Se uma planta não pode viver de acordo com sua natureza, ela morre. O mesmo ocorre com um homem.

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

ابدأ بقراءة أفضل الكتب، وإلا لن تجد الفرصة لقراءتهم أبداً

Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as apply to them. I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits.

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

There is just as much beauty visible to us in the landscape as we are prepared to appreciate, and not a grain more. ... A man sees only what concerns him.

We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.

Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

Wildness is the preservation of the World.

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

Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength.