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I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.
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
Felt
Village
Hoeing
Moments
Shoulders
Alight
Nature
Bird
Sparrow
Garden
Sparrows
Circumstances
Circumstance
Animal
Distinguished
Upon
Shoulder
Moment
Worn
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
I cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts in they are commonly ruled for dollars and cents.
Henry David Thoreau
I could lecture on dry oak leaves I could, but who would hear me? If I were to try it on any large audience, I fear it would be no gain to them, and a positive loss to me. I should have behaved rudely toward my rustling friends.
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Things don't change. We change.
Henry David Thoreau
Nature refuses to sympathize with our sorrow. She seems not to have provided for, but by a thousand contrivances against it.
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No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer?
Henry David Thoreau
All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy.
Henry David Thoreau
I have been breaking silence these twenty-three years and have hardly made a rent in it.
Henry David Thoreau
The hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men.
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Who hears the fishes when they cry?
Henry David Thoreau
I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere.
Henry David Thoreau
We never exchange more than three words with a Friend in our lives on that level to which our thoughts and feelings almost habitually rise.
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The tavern will compare favorably with the church.
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It is a relief to read some true book, wherein all are equally dead,--equally alive. I think the best parts of Shakespeare would only be enhanced by the most thrilling and affecting events. I have found it so. And so much the more, as they are not intended for consolation.
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
The highest condition of art is artlessness.
Henry David Thoreau
Many college text-books, which were a weariness and stumbling-block when I studied, I have since read a little with pleasure and profit.
Henry David Thoreau
Economy is a subject which admits of being treated with levity, but it cannot so be disposed of.
Henry David Thoreau
In society you will not find health, but in nature. Unless our feet at least stood in the midst of nature, all our faces would bepale and livid. Society is always diseased, and the best is the most so.
Henry David Thoreau
Dissent without action is consent.
Henry David Thoreau
We seem to think that the earth must go through the ordeal of sheep-pasturage before it is habitable by man.
Henry David Thoreau
