Henry David Thoreau/civil Disobedience and The Walden Years - 1845%e2%80%931849

Famous quotes containing the words henry david thoreau, henry david, david, thoreau, civil, disobedience, walden and/or years:

    There are old heads in the world who cannot help me by their example or advice to live worthily and satisfactorily to myself; but I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a multitude? They can only force me who obey a higher law than I.... I do not hear of men being forced to live this way or that by masses of men. What sort of life were that to live?
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    I have seen some who did not know when to turn aside their eyes in meeting yours. A truly confident and magnanimous spirit is wiser than to contend for the mastery in such encounters. Serpents alone conquer by the steadiness of their gaze. My friend looks me in the face and sees me, that is all.
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    I remember once dreaming of pushing a canoe up the rivers of Maine, and that, when I had got so high that the channels were dry, I kept on through the ravines and gorges, nearly as well as before, by pushing a little harder, and now it seemed to me that my dream was partially realized.
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    The lakes are something which you are unprepared for; they lie up so high, exposed to the light, and the forest is diminished to a fine fringe on their edges, with here and there a blue mountain, like amethyst jewels set around some jewel of the first water,—so anterior, so superior, to all the changes that are to take place on their shores, even now civil and refined, and fair as they can ever be.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.
    Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)

    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. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    I see the callus on his sole,
    The disappearing last of him
    And of his race starvation slim,
    Oh, years ago—ten thousand years.
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)