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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
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More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
No mortal is alert enough to be present at the first dawn of spring.
Henry David Thoreau
Especially the transcendental philosophy needs the leaven of humor to render it light and digestible.
Henry David Thoreau
However mean your life is, meet it and live it do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are.
Henry David Thoreau
We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.
Henry David Thoreau
It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.
Henry David Thoreau
Every nail driven should be as another rivet in the machine of the universe, you carrying on the work.
Henry David Thoreau
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.
Henry David Thoreau
Music is the sound of the universal laws promulgated. It is the only assured tone. There are in it such strains as far surpass anyman's faith in the loftiness of his destiny. Things are to be learned which it will be worth the while to learn.
Henry David Thoreau
No people ever lived by cursing their fathers, however great a curse their fathers might have been to them.
Henry David Thoreau
There is not one kind of food for all men. You must and you will feed those faculties which you exercise. The laborer whose body is weary does not require the same food with the scholar whose brain is weary.
Henry David Thoreau
By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent.
Henry David Thoreau
Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resigns his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.
Henry David Thoreau
All fables, indeed, have their morals but the innocent enjoy the story.
Henry David Thoreau
How full of the creative genius is the air in which these [snowflakes] are generated! I should hardly admire them more if real stars fell and lodged on my coat. Nature is full of genius. Full of the divinity. So that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.
Henry David Thoreau
Nearest to all things is that power which fashions their being. Next to us the grandest laws are constantly being executed. Next to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are.
Henry David Thoreau
We find it difficult to choose our direction because it does not yet exist distinctly in our idea.
Henry David Thoreau
Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry.
Henry David Thoreau
Friends are made for caring and sharing. Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody.
Henry David Thoreau
The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.
Henry David Thoreau
I once found a kernel of corn in the middle of a deep wood by Walden, tucked in behind a lichen on a pine, about as high as my head, either by a crow or a squirrel. It was a mile at least from any corn-field.
Henry David Thoreau
