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There never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be.

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
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Philosopher
Likely
Soon
Nation
Literature
Nations
Certain
Philosophers
Never
Desirable

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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The Library is a wilderness of books.
Henry David Thoreau
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It is true, we are such poor navigators that our thoughts, for the most part, stand off and on upon a harborless coast, are conversant only with the bights of the bays of poesy, or steer for the public ports of entry, and go into the dry docks of science, where they merely refit for this world, and no natural currents concur to individualize them.
Henry David Thoreau
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My friend is one... who take me for what I am.
Henry David Thoreau
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I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.
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Men are as innocent as the morning to the unsuspicious.
Henry David Thoreau
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Yet we must try the harder, the less the prospect of success.
Henry David Thoreau
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Men reverence one another, not yet God.
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Nature refuses to sympathize with our sorrow. She seems not to have provided for, but by a thousand contrivances against it.
Henry David Thoreau
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Always the laws of light are the same, but the modes and degrees of seeing vary.
Henry David Thoreau
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I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.
Henry David Thoreau
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How sweet it would be to treat men and things, for an hour, for just what they are!
Henry David Thoreau
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The startings and arrivals of the cars are now the epochs in the village day.
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Your richest veins don't lie nearest the surface.
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At a certain season of our life we are accustomed to consider every spot as the possible site of a house.
Henry David Thoreau
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Do what nobody else can do for you. Omit to do anything else.
Henry David Thoreau
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As we looked up in silence to those distant lights, we were reminded that it was a rare imagination which first taught that the stars are worlds, and had conferred a great benefit on mankind.
Henry David Thoreau
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All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.
Henry David Thoreau
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Who hears the fishes when they cry?
Henry David Thoreau
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What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground.
Henry David Thoreau
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A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.
Henry David Thoreau