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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
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Ecologist
Environmentalist
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Naturalist
Philosopher
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Men
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Preserve
Life
Tree
Preserves
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Forests
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Trees
Pine
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More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
Politics is the gizzard of society, full of grit and gravel, and the two political parties are its opposite halves - sometimes split into quarters - which grind on each other. Not only individuals but states have thus a confirmed dyspepsia.
Henry David Thoreau
What can be expressed in words can be expressed in life.
Henry David Thoreau
As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society.
Henry David Thoreau
You must get your living by loving. But as it is said of the merchants that ninety-seven in a hundred fail, so the life of men generally, tried by this standard, is a failure, and bankruptcy may be surely prophesied.
Henry David Thoreau
To the virtuous man, the universe is the only sanctum sanctorum, and the penetralia of the temple are the broad noon of his existence.
Henry David Thoreau
I do not know where to find in any literature, whether ancient or modern, any adequate account of that Nature with which I am acquainted.
Henry David Thoreau
I will come to you, my friend, when I no longer need you. Then you will find a palace, not an almshouse.
Henry David Thoreau
No man's thoughts are new, but the style of their expression is the never-failing novelty which cheers and refreshes men. If we were to answer the question, whether the mass of men, as we know them, talk as the standard authors and reviewers write, or rather as this man writes, we should say that he alone begins to write their language at all.
Henry David Thoreau
Yet the New Testament treats of man and man's so-called spiritual affairs too exclusively, and is too constantly moral and personal, to alone content me, who am not interested solely in man's religious or moral nature, or in man even.
Henry David Thoreau
The state does not demand justice of its members, but thinks that it succeeds very well with the least degree of it, hardly more than rogues practice and so do the neighborhood and the family. What is commonly called Friendship even is only a little more honor among rogues.
Henry David Thoreau
Real power is measured by how much you can let things be.
Henry David Thoreau
...how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!
Henry David Thoreau
Though the hen should sit all day, she could lay only one egg, and, besides, would not have picked up materials for another.
Henry David Thoreau
However much we admire the orator's occasional bursts of eloquence, the noblest written words are commonly as far behind or abovethe fleeting spoken language as the firmament with its stars is behind the clouds.
Henry David Thoreau
Unlike the Concord, the Merrimack is not a dead but a living stream, though it has less life within its waters and on its banks. It has a swift current, and, in this part of its course, a clayey bottom, almost no weeds, and comparatively few fishes.
Henry David Thoreau
No mortal is alert enough to be present at the first dawn of spring.
Henry David Thoreau
If you will not try, you will go to your grave with your song still inside you.
Henry David Thoreau
Unless we do more than simply learn the trade of our time, we are but apprentices, and not yet masters of the art of life.
Henry David Thoreau
It is pleasant to have been to a place the way a river went.
Henry David Thoreau
I should say that the useful results of science had accumulated, but that there had been no accumulation of knowledge, strictly speaking, for posterity for knowledge is to be acquired only by a corresponding experience. How can we know what we are told merely? Each man can interpret another's experience only by his own.
Henry David Thoreau
