"Men and boys are learning all kinds of trades but how to make men of themselves. They learn to make houses; but they are not so well housed, they are not so contented in their houses, as the woodchucks in their holes. What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on? — If you cannot tolerate the planet that it is on? Grade the ground first. If a man believes and expects great things of himself, it makes no odds where you put him, or what you show him ... he will be surrounded by grandeur. He is in the condition of a healthy and hungry man, who says to himself, — How sweet this crust is!"
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Anarchists from the United StatesAbolitionistsUnitarians from the United States19th-century poets from the United StatesLeft-libertarians
Original Language: English
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Sources
Letter to Harrison Blake (20 May 1860); published in Familiar Letters (1865)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henry_David_Thoreau
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Henry David Thoreau
1817 – 1862
US-amerikanischer Schriftsteller
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