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A man is wise with the wisdom of his time only, and ignorant with its ignorance.
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
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Transcendentalism
Ignorant
Ignorance
Wise
Wisdom
Men
Time
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
Everything counts for gain when we are cosmically awake. Nothing counts, unless we are awake. No enjoyments last, no successes satisfy, no gains have meaning unless accomplished in a state of wakefulness.
Henry David Thoreau
If it is the result of a pure love, there can be nothing sensual in marriage. Chastity is something positive, not negative. It isthe virtue of the married especially. All lusts or base pleasures must give place to loftier delights. They who meet as superior beings cannot perform the deeds of inferior ones.
Henry David Thoreau
Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve.
Henry David Thoreau
This bird sees the white man come and the Indian withdraw, but it withdraws not. Its untamed voice is still heard above the tinkling of the forge... It remains to remind us of aboriginal nature.
Henry David Thoreau
Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. She exists for no other end. Do not resist. With the least inclination to be well, we should not be sick.
Henry David Thoreau
There may be an excess of cultivation as well as of anything else, until civilization becomes pathetic. A highly cultivated man,--all whose bones can be bent! whose heaven-born virtues are but good manners!
Henry David Thoreau
What stuff is the man made of who is not coexistent in our thought with the purest and sublimest truth?
Henry David Thoreau
You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land there is no other life but this.
Henry David Thoreau
A man will not need to study history to find out what is best for his own culture.
Henry David Thoreau
A journal is a repository for all those fragmentary ideas and odd scraps of information that might otherwise be lost and which some day might lead to more harmonious compositions.
Henry David Thoreau
How sweet it would be to treat men and things, for an hour, for just what they are!
Henry David Thoreau
Men talk glibly enough about moonshine, as if they knew its qualities very well, and despised them as owls might talk of sunshine,--none of your sunshine!--but this word commonly means merely something which they do not understand,--which they are abed and asleep to, however much it may be worth their while to be up and awake to it.
Henry David Thoreau
A man cannot wheedle nor overawe his Genius. It requires to be conciliated by nobler conduct than the world demands or can appreciate.
Henry David Thoreau
It is dry, hazy June weather. We are more of the earth, farther from heaven these days.
Henry David Thoreau
How earthy old people become --moldy as the grave! Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no foretaste of immortality in it. They remind me of earthworms and mole crickets.
Henry David Thoreau
Most men cry better than they speak. You get more nurture out of them by pinching than addressing them.
Henry David Thoreau
I begin to see an object when I cease to understand it.
Henry David Thoreau
Open all your pores and bathe in all the tides of nature, in all her streams and oceans, at all seasons.
Henry David Thoreau
The inhabitants of earth behold commonly but the dark and shadowy under side of heaven's pavement it is only when seen at a favorable angle in the horizon, morning or evening, that some faint streaks of the rich lining of the clouds are revealed.
Henry David Thoreau
Goodness is the only investment that never fails.
Henry David Thoreau
