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I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and threw them out the window in disgust.
Henry David Thoreau
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Henry David Thoreau
Age: 44 †
Born: 1817
Born: July 12
Died: 1862
Died: May 6
Abolitionist
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
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More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such. It is the bog in our brains and bowels, the primitive vigor of Nature in us, that inspires that dream. I shall never find in the wilds of Labrador a greater wildness than in some recess of Concord.
Henry David Thoreau
Heaven is not one of your fertile Ohio bottoms, you may depend on it.
Henry David Thoreau
A man receives only what he is ready to receive... The phenomenon or fact that cannot in any wise be linked with the rest of what he has observed, he does not observe.
Henry David Thoreau
All men are really most attracted by the beauty of plain speech, and they even write in a florid style in imitation of this. Theyprefer to be misunderstood rather than to come short of its exuberance.
Henry David Thoreau
Where there is a lull of truth, an institution springs up. But the truth blows right on over it, nevertheless, and at length blows it down.
Henry David Thoreau
Say, Not so, and you will out circle the philosophers.
Henry David Thoreau
Men go back to the mountains, as they go back to sailing ships at sea, because in the mountains and on the sea they must face up.
Henry David Thoreau
My enemies are worms, cool days, and most of all woodchucks.
Henry David Thoreau
It is the man determines what is said, not the words.
Henry David Thoreau
The effect of a good government is to make life more valuable of a bad one, to make it less valuable.
Henry David Thoreau
All the moral laws are readily translated into natural philosophy, for often we have only to restore the primitive meaning of thewords by which they are expressed, or to attend to their literal instead of their metaphorical sense. They are already supernatural philosophy.
Henry David Thoreau
If the fairest features of the landscape are to be named after men, let them be the noblest and worthiest men alone.
Henry David Thoreau
The same soil is good for men and for trees. A man's health requires as many acres of meadow to his prospect as his farm does loads of muck.
Henry David Thoreau
The only fruit which even much living yields seems to be often only some trivial success,--the ability to do some slight thing better. We make conquest only of husks and shells for the most part,--at least apparently,--but sometimes these are cinnamon and spices, you know.
Henry David Thoreau
Nature, even when she is scant and thin outwardly, satisfies us still by the assurance of a certain generosity at the roots.
Henry David Thoreau
How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had a seedtime of character?
Henry David Thoreau
A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book.
Henry David Thoreau
We should impart our courage and not our despair.
Henry David Thoreau
I have found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also.
Henry David Thoreau
The most difficult thing to understand during conversation is silence.
Henry David Thoreau