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How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual friends, that we might go and meet their ideal cousins.
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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Autobiographer
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Ecologist
Environmentalist
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
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More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
I should say that the useful results of science had accumulated, but that there had been no accumulation of knowledge, strictly speaking, for posterity for knowledge is to be acquired only by a corresponding experience. How can we know what we are told merely? Each man can interpret another's experience only by his own.
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
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
There never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be.
Henry David Thoreau
When we are in health, all sounds fife and drum for us we hear the notes of music in the air, or catch its echoes dying away when we awake in the dawn.
Henry David Thoreau
What would human life be without forests, those natural cities?
Henry David Thoreau
Whatever we leave to God, God does and blesses us.
Henry David Thoreau
For eighteen hundred years, though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of legislation?
Henry David Thoreau
Only the defeated and deserters go to war.
Henry David Thoreau
The Slothful do not have the time to become virtuous or despicable.
Henry David Thoreau
When were the good and the brave ever in a majority?
Henry David Thoreau
We should endeavor practically in our lives to correct all the defects which our imagination detects.
Henry David Thoreau
Friends will not only live in harmony, but in melody.
Henry David Thoreau
We must love our friend so much that she shall be associated with our purest and holiest thoughts alone.
Henry David Thoreau
All fables, indeed, have their morals but the innocent enjoy the story.
Henry David Thoreau
I saw deep in the eyes of the animals the human soul look out upon me. I saw where it was born deep down under feathers and fur, or condemned for a while to roam four-footed among the brambles,I caught the clinging mute glance of the prisoner and swore that I would be faithful.
Henry David Thoreau
It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?
Henry David Thoreau
Friends will be much apart. They will respect more each other's privacy than their communion.
Henry David Thoreau
The incessant anxiety and strain of some is a well-nigh incurable form of disease. We are made to exaggerate the importance of what we do and yet how much is not done by us!
Henry David Thoreau
At present the globe goes with a shattered constitution in its orbit.... No doubt the simple powers of nature, properly directed by man, would make it healthy and a paradise as the laws of man's own constitution but wait to be obeyed, to restore him to health and happiness.
Henry David Thoreau
