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…
By closing the eyes and slumbering, and consenting to be deceived by shows, men establish and confirm their daily life of routine and habit everywhere, which still is built on purely illusory foundations. Children, who play life, discern its true law.
We are surrounded by a rich and fertile mystery. May we not probe it, pry into it, employ ourselves about it, a little?
The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.
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.
Men esteem Truth remote, in the outskirts of the system, behind the farthest star, before Adam and after the last man. In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God Himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all ages.
How can he remember well his ignorance, which his growth requires, who has so often to use his knowledge?
We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep.
The frontiers are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man fronts a fact.
When you travel to the Celestial City, carry no letters of introduction. When you knock, ask to see God, none of the servants.
Now or Never! You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.