Every man will be a poet if he can; otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the poet.
Henry David Thoreau Quotes
I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.
That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
We had hardly got out of the streets of Bangor before I began to be exhilarated by the sight of the wild fir and spruce tops, and those of other primitive evergreens, peering through the mist in the horizon. It was like the sight and odor of cake to a schoolboy.
As for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his […]
To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.
I would not subtract anything from the praise that is due to philanthropy, but merely demand justice for all who by their lives and works are a blessing to mankind. I do not value chiefly a man’s uprightness and benevolence, which are, as it were, his stem and leaves. Those plants of whose greenness withered […]
There comes into my mind such an indescribable, infinite, all-absorbing, divine, heavenly pleasure, a sense of elevation and expansion, and I have naught to do with it. I perceive that I am dealt with superior powers. This is a pleasure, a joy, an existence which I have not procured myself. I speak as a witness […]
He is blessed over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life in remembering the past.
Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through other’s eyes for an instant? We should live in all the ages of the world in an hour; ay, in all the worlds of the ages. History, Poetry, Mythology! I know of no reading […]
