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My life has been the poem I would have writ, But I could not both live and utter it.

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
Life
Writ
Utter
Poem
Poetry
Live
Would

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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The way by which you may get money almost without exception leads downward.
Henry David Thoreau
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Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.
Henry David Thoreau
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Those things for which the most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is an important item in the term bill, while for the far more valuable education which he gets by associating with the most cultivated of his contemporaries no charge is made.
Henry David Thoreau
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We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success. What we do best or most perfectly is what we have most thoroughly learned by the longest practice, and at length it falls from us without our notice, as a leaf from a tree.
Henry David Thoreau
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The ocean is a wilderness reaching round the globe, wilder than a Bengal jungle, and fuller of monsters, washing the very wharves of our cities and the gardens of our sea-side residences.
Henry David Thoreau
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Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows.
Henry David Thoreau
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It has been so written, for the most part, that the times it describes are with remarkable propriety called dark ages. They are dark, as one has observed, because we are so in the dark about them.
Henry David Thoreau
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One should be always on the trail of one's own deepest nature. For it is the fearless living out of your own essential nature that connects you to the Divine.
Henry David Thoreau
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He may travel who can subsist on the wild fruits and game of the most cultivated country.
Henry David Thoreau
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However much we admire the orator's occasional bursts of eloquence, the noblest written words are commonly as far behind or abovethe fleeting spoken language as the firmament with its stars is behind the clouds.
Henry David Thoreau
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I only desire sincere relations with the worthiest of my acquaintance, that they may give me an opportunity once in a year to speak the truth.
Henry David Thoreau
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Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. Why, nature is but another name for health.
Henry David Thoreau
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I hear beyond the range of sound, I see beyond the range of sight, New earths and skies and seas around, And in my day the sun doth pale his light.
Henry David Thoreau
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All men are children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the morning.
Henry David Thoreau
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Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve.
Henry David Thoreau
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We hear and apprehend only what we already half know.
Henry David Thoreau
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The heart is forever inexperienced.
Henry David Thoreau
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Thus the State never intentionally confronts a man's sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion.
Henry David Thoreau
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The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.
Henry David Thoreau
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The hawk is aerial brother of the wave which he sails over and surveys, those his perfect air-inflated wings answering to the elemental unfledged pinions of the sea.
Henry David Thoreau