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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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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
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Men
Wherever
East
Fronts
West
South
Courage
Fact
Frontiers
Facts
North
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
He who is conversant with the supernal powers will not worship these inferior deities of the wind, waves, tide, and sunshine. Butwe would not disparage the importance of such calculations as we have described. They are truths in physics because they are true in ethics.
Henry David Thoreau
The monster is never just there where we think he is. What is truly monstrous is our cowardice and sloth.
Henry David Thoreau
All nations love the same jests and tales, Jews, Christians, and Mahometans, and the same translated suffice for all.
Henry David Thoreau
The sea-shore is a sort of neutral ground, a most advantageous point from which to contemplate the world....There is naked Nature, inhumanly sincere, wasting no thought on man, nibbling at the cliffy shore where gulls wheel amid the spray.
Henry David Thoreau
If rightly made, a boat would be a sort of amphibious animal, a creature of two elements, related by one half its structure to some swift and shapely fish, and by the other to some strong-winged and graceful bird.
Henry David Thoreau
The strongest wind cannot stagger a Spirit it is a Spirit's breath. A just man's purpose cannot be split on any Grampus or material rock, but itself will split rocks till it succeeds.
Henry David Thoreau
Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds.
Henry David Thoreau
Some creatures are made to see in the dark.
Henry David Thoreau
That so many are ready to live by luck, and so get the means of commanding the labor of others less lucky, without contributing any value to society! And that is called enterprise! I know of no more startling development of the immorality of trade, and all the common modes of getting a living.
Henry David Thoreau
To forget all about your mistakes adds to them perhaps.
Henry David Thoreau
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
We should come home from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day with new experience and character.
Henry David Thoreau
If labor mainly, or to any considerable degree, serves the purpose of a police, to keep men out of mischief, it indicates a rottenness at the foundation of our community.
Henry David Thoreau
I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.
Henry David Thoreau
In the planting of the seeds of most trees, the best gardeners do no more than follow Nature, though they may not know it.
Henry David Thoreau
I hear many condemn these men because they were so few. When were the good and the brave ever in a majority? Would you have had him wait till that time came?--till you and I came over to him?
Henry David Thoreau
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
Most men, it seems to me, do not care for Nature and would sell their share in all her beauty, as long as they may live, for a stated sum - many for a glass of rum. Thank God, men cannot as yet fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth!
Henry David Thoreau
I did not know that we had ever quarreled.
Henry David Thoreau
If a man were to place himself in an attitude to bear manfully the greatest evil that can be inflicted on him, he would find suddenly that there was no such evil to bear his brave back would go a-begging.
Henry David Thoreau
