Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862) was an American essayist, poet, and philosopher from Concord, Massachusetts. A leading transcendentalist, Thoreau is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay Civil Disobedience, an argument for disobedience to an unjust state. Thoreau’s books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry amount to more than 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions are his writings on natural history and philosophy.
Quotes by Henry David Thoreau…
With thinking we may be beside ourselves in a sane sense. By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences, and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent.
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.
Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
Man is the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself.
The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive… We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.
If a man constantly aspires, is he not elevated? Did ever a man try heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no advantage in them — that it was a vain endeavor?
A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of any prince.
Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself… The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour… some part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night. Little is to be expected of that day, if it can be called a day, to which we are not awakened by our Genius, but by the mechanical nudgings of some servitor, are not awakened by our own newly acquired force and aspirations from within… to a higher life.
