Quote

I am a happy camper so I guess I’m doing something right. Happiness is like a butterfly the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.

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
Turns
Chase
Happiness
Shoulder
Happy
Distraction
Come
Butterfly
Camper
Right
Shoulders
Campers
Something
Guess
Elude
Things
Turn
Camping
Like
Attention
Softly

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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What avails it that another loves you, if he does not understand you? Such love is a curse.
Henry David Thoreau
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Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.
Henry David Thoreau
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Nothing more strikingly betrays the credulity of mankind than medicine. Quackery is a thing universal, and universally successful. In this case it becomes literally true that no imposition is too great for the credulity of men.
Henry David Thoreau
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There is no history of how bad became better.
Henry David Thoreau
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The frontiers are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man fronts a fact.
Henry David Thoreau
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Ice is an interesting subject for contemplation. They told me that they had some in the ice-houses at Fresh Pond five years old which was as good as ever. Why is it that a bucket of water soon becomes putrid, but frozen remains sweet forever? It is commonly said that this is the difference between the affections and the intellect.
Henry David Thoreau
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Almost all wild apples are handsome. They cannot be too gnarly and crabbed and rusty to look at. The gnarliest will have some redeeming traits even to the eye.
Henry David Thoreau
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It is not worth the while to let our imperfections disturb us always. The conscience really does not, and ought not to monopolizethe whole of our lives, any more than the heart or the head. It is as liable to disease as any other part.
Henry David Thoreau
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Pray, for what do we move ever but to get rid of our furniture, our exuviæ at last to go from this world to another newly furnished, and leave this to be burned?
Henry David Thoreau
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It is remarkable that there is little or nothing to be remembered written on the subject of getting a living: how to make getting a living not merely honest and honorable, but altogether inviting and glorious for if getting a living is not so, then living is not.
Henry David Thoreau
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The silence sings. It is musical. I remember a night when it was audible. I heard the unspeakable.
Henry David Thoreau
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When the chopper would praise a pine, he will commonly tell you that the one he cut was so big that a yoke of oxen stood on its stump as if that were what the pine had grown for, to become the footstool of oxen.
Henry David Thoreau
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I perceive that we inhabitants of New England live this mean life that we do because our vision does not penetrate the surface ofthings. We think that that is which appears to be.
Henry David Thoreau
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How can any man be weak who dares to be at all?
Henry David Thoreau
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They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar.
Henry David Thoreau
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Not secondary to the sun, she gives us his blaze again, Void of its flame, and sheds a softer day... In Heaven queen she is among the spheres She, mistress-like, makes all things to be pure.
Henry David Thoreau
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When the State wishes to endow an academy or university, it grants it a tract of forest land: one saw represents an academy, a gang, a university.
Henry David Thoreau
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It is remarkable that there are few men so well employed, so much to their minds, but that a little money or fame would commonly buy them off from their present pursuit.
Henry David Thoreau
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As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.
Henry David Thoreau
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The sacredness, if there is any, is all in yourself and not in the place.
Henry David Thoreau