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If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too.

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
May
Shoulders
Firsts
Pursue
First
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Must
Sitting
Contemplations
Men
Least
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Life
Wisdom
Devote
Upon
Disobedience
Another
Contemplation

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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It is the characteristic of great poems that they will yield of their sense in due proportion to the hasty and the deliberate reader. To the practical they will be common sense, and to the wise wisdom as either the traveler may wet his lips, or an army may fill its water-casks at a full stream.
Henry David Thoreau
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It is true, we are such poor navigators that our thoughts, for the most part, stand off and on upon a harborless coast, are conversant only with the bights of the bays of poesy, or steer for the public ports of entry, and go into the dry docks of science, where they merely refit for this world, and no natural currents concur to individualize them.
Henry David Thoreau
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He is blessed over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life in remembering the past
Henry David Thoreau
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Who could believe in the prophecies ... that the world would end this summer, while one milkweed with faith matured its seeds.
Henry David Thoreau
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The wisest man preaches no doctrines he has no scheme he sees no rafter, not even a cobweb, against the heavens. It is clear sky.
Henry David Thoreau
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All sensuality is one, though it takes many forms all purity is one. It is the same whether a man eat, or drink, or cohabit, or sleep sensually. They are but one appetite, and we only need to see a person do any one of these things to know how great a sensualist he is. The impure can neither stand nor sit with purity.
Henry David Thoreau
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The very uprightness of the pines and maples asserts the ancient rectitude and vigor of nature. Our lives need the relief of such a background, where the pine flourishes and the jay still screams.
Henry David Thoreau
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You know about a person who deeply interests you more than you can be told. A look, a gesture, an act, which to everybody else is insignificant tells you more about that one than words can.
Henry David Thoreau
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Men have become the tools of their tools.
Henry David Thoreau
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Some do not walk at all others walk in the highways a few walk across lots. Roads are made for horses and men of business. I do not travel in them much, comparatively, because I am not in a hurry to get to any tavern or grocery or livery-stable or depot to which they lead.
Henry David Thoreau
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Removing the weeds, putting fresh soil about the bean stems, and encouraging this weed which I had sown, making the yellow soil express its summer thought in bean leaves and blossoms rather than in wormwood and piper and millet grass, making the earth say beans instead of grass, - this was my daily work.
Henry David Thoreau
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The philanthropist too often surrounds mankind with the remembrance of his own cast- off griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy. We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease, and take care that this does not spread by contagion.
Henry David Thoreau
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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
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So long as a man is faithful to himself, everything is in his favor, government, society, the very sun, moon, and stars.
Henry David Thoreau
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Let your condiments be in the condition of your senses.
Henry David Thoreau
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There is a slumbering subterranean fire in nature which never goes out, and which no cold can chill.
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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Our hymn-books resound with a melodious cursing of God and enduring Him forever.
Henry David Thoreau
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The outward is only the outside of that which is within. Men are not concealed under habits, but are revealed by them they are their true clothes.
Henry David Thoreau
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I make it my business to extract from Nature what ever nutriment she can furnish me.... I milk the sky and the earth.
Henry David Thoreau