Quotes from Henry David Thoreau

Si una planta no puede vivir de acuerdo con su naturaleza muere, y lo mismo le ocurre al hombre.

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. It's thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars.

We should seek to be fellow students with the pupil, and should learn of, as well as with him, if we would be most helpful to him.

Para resumir, estou convencido, por e fé e experiência, que a automanutenção neste mundo não é um sofrimento mas um passatempo, se a pessoa viver de modo simples e sábio; tanto que as ocupações dos povos mais simples são os esportes dos mais sofisticados. Não é necessário que um homem ganhe a vida com o suor de seu rosto, a não ser que ele sue muito mais que eu

You only need sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of too much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.

Muita gente se preocupa com os monumentos do ocidente e do oriente, quer saber quem os construiu. De minha parte, gostaria de saber quem nessa época deixou de construí-los, quem estava acima de tais ninharias.

Mas o trabalho manual, mesmo quando se torna quase enfadonho e pesado, talvez nunca seja a pior forma de ociosidade

The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is.

O for a man who is a man, and, as my neighbor says, has a bone in his back which you cannot pass your hand through!

La mayoría de los hombres, incluso en este país relativamente libre, se afanan tanto por los puros artificios e innecesarias labores de la vida, que no les queda tiempo para cosechar sus mejores frutos.

You must live within yourself, and depend upon yourself always tucked up and ready for a start, and not have many affairs.

While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.

Some men wonder at the monuments of the west and the east - to know who built them. For my part I should like to know who, in those days, did not build them, who were above such trifling

I never found the companion that was so companionable than solitude.

I heartily accept the motto,—That government is best which governs least; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe,—That government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government

If we stay at home and mind our business, who will want railroads?

When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only.

Quem percebe o verdadeiro sabor do alimento nunca será um glutão; quem não o percebe não pode deixar de sê-lo

Though winter is represented in the almanac as an old man, facing the wind and sleet, and drawing his cloak about him, we rather think of him as a merry woodchopper, and warm-blooded youth, as blithe as summer.

Do empenho vem a sabedoria e a pureza; da preguiça a ignorância e a sensualidade

Quienes no conocen otras fuentes de verdad más puras, quienes no han seguido su curso hasta sus orígenes, están, y con razón, del lado de la Biblia y la Constitución y beben de ellas con reverencia y humildad. Pero aquellos que van más allá y buscan el origen del agua que gotea sobre el lago o la charca, se ciñen los lomos una vez más y siguen su peregrinación en busca del manantial.

It should not be by their architecture, but why not even by their power of abstract thought, that nations should seek to commemorate themselves? How much more admirable the Bhagvat-Geeta than all the ruins of the East! Towers and temples are the luxury of princes. A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of any prince. Genius is not a retainer to any emperor, nor is its material silver, or gold, or marble, except to a trifling extent.

If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets. When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality.