Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862) was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist. He is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.
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“On the whole, we were glad of the storm, which would show us the ocean in its angriest mood.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Nature seemed to have adorned herself for our departure with a profusion of fringes and curls, mingled with the bright tints of flowers, reflected in the water. But we missed the white water-lily, which is the queen of river flowers, its reign being over for this season.... Many of this species inhabit our Concord water.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Where there are large powers with little ambition ... nature may be said to have fallen short of her purposes.”
—Sir Henry Taylor (1800–1886)
“His style is eminently colloquial, and no wonder it is strange to meet with in a book. It is not literary or classical; it has not the music of poetry, nor the pomp of philosophy, but the rhythms and cadences of conversation endlessly repeated.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“No man in America has ever stood up so persistently and effectively for the dignity of human nature, knowing himself for a man, and the equal of any and all governments. In that sense he was the most American of us all.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)