Quotes from Henry David Thoreau

It is only when we forget our learning, do we begin to know.

When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left. But alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear. It is never too late to give up our prejudices.

priznam, da sem osupel ob mo?i vzdržljivosti - da sploh ne omenjam moralne neob?utljivosti - svojih sosedov, ki se tedne, mesece, da celo leta, za ves dan zapirajo v svoje trgovine in pisarne. Ne vem, iz kakšne snovi so, da lahko ob treh popoldan sedijo tamkaj, kakor da bi bila ura tri zjutraj.

We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones.

Seveda pa nam ne bo ni? koristilo, da svoje korake usmerimo v gozdove, ?e nas ne bodo tudi zares ponesli tja. Vznemirim se, kadar se mi zgodi, da s svojim telesom potujem že kak kilometer skozi gozd, ne da bi tja prispel tudi v duhu.

A man's ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beautiful—while his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless, besides being ugly. Which is the best man to deal with—he who knows nothing about a subject, and, what is extremely rare, knows that he knows nothing, or he who really knows

The written word is the choicest of relics.

To je bila svetloba, ki si je še trenutke pred tem ne bi mogla predstavljati in tudi zrak je bil tako topel in miren, da bi travnik ne mogel biti bolj nebeški. Ko sva pomislila, da to ni bil osamljen pojav, ki se ne bo zgodil nikoli ve?, temve? da se bo dogajal ve?no, ob nešteto ve?erih, in razsvetljeval ter pomirjal najnovejše otroke, ki bodo hodili tamkaj, se je zdel še veli?astnejši.

Methinks it would be some advantage to philosophy if men were named merely in the gross, as they are known. It would be necessary only to know the genus and perhaps the race or variety, to know the individual. We are not prepared to believe that every private soldier in a Roman army had a name of his own—because we have not supposed that he had a character of his own.

Books are the treasured wealth of the world.

I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line. You

I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and I threw them out the window in disgust. How, then, could I have a furnished house? I would rather sit in the open air, for no dust gathers on the grass, unless where man has broken ground.

We get the language with which to describe our various lives out of a common mint. (Letter, April 26, 1857, to B.B. Wiley)

men have become the tools of their tools. The

Blue is light seen through a veil.

Direct your eye right inward, and you'll find A thousand regions in your mind Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be Expert in home-cosmography."* What

In our most trivial walks, we are constantly, though unconsciously, steering like pilots by certain well-known beacons and headlands, and if we go beyond our usual course we still carry in our minds the bearing of some neighboring cape; and not till we are completely lost, or turned round—for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost—do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature.

No wealth can buy the requisite leisure, freedom, and independence which are the capital in this profession. It comes only by the grace of God. It requires a direct dispensation from Heaven to become a walker. You must be born into the

El efecto de un buen gobierno es hacer que la vida tenga más valor, el de una mal gobierno, que tenga menos valor Podemos permitirnos que el ferrocarril y todo lo meramente material se devalúe, porque ello nos lleva únicamente a vivir de formar más sencilla y económica, pero imaginad que se devaluara la propia vida.

Here is this vast, savage, hovering mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man—a sort of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, a civilization destined to have a speedy limit.

to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it

The stars are the jewels of the night, and perchance surpass anything which day has to show.

if one were to judge these men wholly by the effects of their actions, and not partly by their intentions, they would deserve to be classed and punished with those mischievous persons who put obstructions on the railroads.