Famous quotes containing the words henry david thoreau, henry david, david, thoreau, civil, disobedience, walden and/or years:
“What recommends commerce to me is its enterprise and bravery.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The most interesting thing which I heard of, in this township of Hull, was an unfailing spring, whose locality was pointed out to me on the side of a distant hill, as I was panting along the shore, though I did not visit it. Perhaps, if I should go through Rome, it would be some spring on the Capitoline Hill I should remember the longest.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If one hesitates in his path, let him not proceed. Let him respect his doubts, for doubts, too, may have some divinity in them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There is always a present and extant life, be it better or worse, which all combine to uphold.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Both of us felt more anxiety about the South—about the colored people especially—than about anything else sinister in the result. My hope of a sound currency will somehow be realized; civil service reform will be delayed; but the great injury is in the South. There the Amendments will be nullified, disorder will continue, prosperity to both whites and colored people will be pushed off for years.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“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)
“He suggested that there might be men of genius in the lowest grades of life, however permanently humble and illiterate, who take their own view always, or do not pretend to see at all; who are as bottomless even as Walden Pond was thought to be, though they may be dark and muddy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In 1845 he built himself a small framed house on the shores of Walden Pond, and lived there two years alone, a life of labor and study. This action was quite native and fit for him. No one who knew him would tax him with affectation. He was more unlike his neighbors in his thought than in his action. As soon as he had exhausted himself that advantages of his solitude, he abandoned it.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)