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Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.
Henry David Thoreau
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Henry David Thoreau
Age: 44 †
Born: 1817
Born: July 12
Died: 1862
Died: May 6
Abolitionist
Author
Autobiographer
Diarist
Ecologist
Environmentalist
Essayist
Naturalist
Philosopher
Poet
Translator
Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Alive
Forests
Moose
Rather
Trees
Pine
Inspirational
Environmental
Ecology
Better
Destroy
Conservation
Every
Creatures
Understands
Men
Dead
Preserve
Life
Tree
Preserves
Environment
Creature
Aright
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
Instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them.
Henry David Thoreau
We are superior to the joy we experience.
Henry David Thoreau
The most interesting thing which I heard of, in this township of Hull, was an unfailing spring, whose locality was pointed out tome 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
What are men celebrating? They are all on a committee of arrangements, and hourly expect a speech from somebody. God is only the president of the day, and Webster is his orator.
Henry David Thoreau
A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.
Henry David Thoreau
How shall we account for our pursuits, if they are original? We get the language with which to describe our various lives out of acommon mint.
Henry David Thoreau
All the past is here, present to be tried let it approve itself if it can.
Henry David Thoreau
There may be something petty in a refined taste it easily degenerates into effeminacy. It does not consider the broadest use. It is not content with simple good and bad, and so is fastidious and curious or nice only.
Henry David Thoreau
Be it life or death, we crave only reality.
Henry David Thoreau
I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life.
Henry David Thoreau
Life is grand, and so are its environments of Past and Future. Would the face of nature be so serene and beautiful if man's destiny were not equally so?
Henry David Thoreau
Art can never match the luxury and superfluity of Nature. In the former all is seen it cannot afford concealed wealth, and is niggardly in comparison but Nature, even when she is scant and thin outwardly, satisfies us still by the assurance of a certain generosity at the roots.
Henry David Thoreau
If you will not try, you will go to your grave with your song still inside you.
Henry David Thoreau
Even in civilized communities, the embryo man passes through the hunter stage of development.
Henry David Thoreau
It takes a man of genius to travel in his own country, in his native village to make any progress between his door and his gate.
Henry David Thoreau
What great interval is there between him who is caught in Africa and made a plantation slave of in the South, and him who is caught in New England and made a Unitarian minister of?
Henry David Thoreau
You may raise enough money to tunnel a mountain, but you cannot raise money enough to hire a man who is minding his own business.
Henry David Thoreau
It is possible to invent a house still more convenient and luxurious than we have...but shall we always study to obtain more of these things, and not sometimes to be content with less?
Henry David Thoreau
Many old people receive pensions for no other reason, it seems to me, but as a compensation for having lived a long time ago.
Henry David Thoreau
Instead of water we got here a draught of beer, a lumberer's drink, which would acclimate and naturalize a man at once,-which would make him see green, and, if he slept, dream that he heard the wind sough among the pines.
Henry David Thoreau