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It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?
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
Enough
Manage
Time
Management
Focused
Prioritization
Busy
Punctuality
Inspiring
Fog
Question
Ants
Focus
Timing
Action
Priorities
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
We have not so good a right to hate any as our Friend.
Henry David Thoreau
To a small man every greater is an exaggeration.
Henry David Thoreau
All that are printed and bound are not books they do not necessarily belong to letters, but are oftener to be ranked with the other luxuries and appendages of civilized life. Base wares are palmed off under a thousand disguises.
Henry David Thoreau
I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks.
Henry David Thoreau
In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, they had better aim at something high.
Henry David Thoreau
Keep up the fires of thought, and all will go well.
Henry David Thoreau
The great poem must have the stamp of greatness as well as its essence.
Henry David Thoreau
In my short experience of human life, the outward obstacles, if there were any such, have not been living men, but the institutions of the dead.
Henry David Thoreau
I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute Freedom and Wildness, as contrasted with a Freedom and Culture merely civil, - to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society.
Henry David Thoreau
All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be.
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To be awake is to be alive.
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I have seen some whose consciences, owing undoubtedly to former indulgence, had grown to be as irritable as spoilt children, and at length gave them no peace. They did not know when to swallow their cud, and their lives of course yielded no milk.
Henry David Thoreau
It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.
Henry David Thoreau
If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself.
Henry David Thoreau
We are older by faith than by experience.
Henry David Thoreau
We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.
Henry David Thoreau
The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. I have no wealth to bestow on him. If he knows that I am happy in loving him, he will want no other reward. Is not friendship divine in this?
Henry David Thoreau
My life has been the poem I would have writ, But I could not both live and utter it.
Henry David Thoreau
Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows.
Henry David Thoreau
The very uprightness of the pines and maples asserts the ancient rectitude and vigor of nature. Our lives need the relief of such a background, where the pine flourishes and the jay still screams.
Henry David Thoreau