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Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.
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
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Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Honesty
Ought
Truth
Better
Believe
Make
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
We must look a long time before we can see
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The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement.
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The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly. They make shift to live merely by conformity, practically as their fathers did, and are in no sense the progenitors of a nobler race of men.
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Who that has heard a strain of music feared then lest he should speak extravagantly any more forever?
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Nature abhors a vacuum, and if I can only walk with sufficient carelessness I am sure to be filled.
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I have seen how the foundations of the world are laid, and I have not the least doubt that it will stand a good while.
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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.
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We are made happy when reason can discover no occasion for it. The memory of some past moments is more persuasive than the experience of present ones. There have been visions of such breadth and brightness that these motes were invisible in their light.
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The culture of the hop ... so analagous to the culture and uses of the grape, may afford a theme for future poets.
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If you will not try, you will go to your grave with your song still inside you.
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Such were garrulous and noisy eras, which no longer yield any sound, but the Grecian or silent and melodious era is ever soundingand resounding in the ears of men.
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He is the rich man, and enjoys the fruit of his riches, who summer and winter forever can find delight in his own thoughts.
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The whole tree itself is but one leaf, and rivers are still vaster leaves whose pulp is intervening earth, and towns and cities are the ova of insects in their axils.
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I have no designs on society, or nature, or God. I am simply what I am, or I begin to be that. I live in the present. I only remember the past, and anticipate the future. I love to live.
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A journal is a repository for all those fragmentary ideas and odd scraps of information that might otherwise be lost and which some day might lead to more harmonious compositions.
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It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart it being much more sensitive.
Henry David Thoreau
One of the most attractive things about the flowers is their beautiful reserve.
Henry David Thoreau
Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old return to them. Things do not change we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society.
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In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, they had better aim at something high.
Henry David Thoreau
There is an orientalism in the most restless pioneer, and the farthest west is but the farthest east.
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