"In society you will not find health,..." - Quote by Henry David Thoreau
In society you will not find health, but in nature. Unless our feet at least stood in the midst of nature, all our faces would bepale and livid. Society is always diseased, and the best is the most so.
More by Henry David Thoreau
“How can he remember well his ignorance - which his growth requires - who has so often to use his knowledge?”
“Think for yourself, or others will think for you without thinking of you.”
“We are made happy when reason can discover no occasion for it. The memory of some past moments is more persuasive than the experience of present ones. There have been visions of such breadth and brightness that these motes were invisible in their light.”
More on Nature
“Cities force growth and make men talkative and entertaining, but they make them artificial. What possesses interest for us is thenatural of each, his constitutional excellence. This is forever a surprise, engaging and lovely; we cannot be satiated with knowing it, and about it; and it is this which the conversation with Nature cherishes and guards.”
“A bird is an instrument working according to mathematical law, which instrument it is within the capacity of man to reproduce with all its movements.”
“Does a man shrink from change? Why, what can come into being save by change?”
More on Society
“That which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it”
“One of the main purposes of laws in a democratic society is to put burdens upon intelligence and reduce it to impotence. Ostensibly, their aim is to penalize anti-social acts; actually their aim is to penalize heretical opinions. At least ninety-five Americans out of every 100 believe that this process is honest and even laudable; it is practically impossible to convince them that there is anything evil in it. In other words, they cannot grasp the concept of liberty.”
“Some say our national pastime is baseball. Not me. It's gossip.”