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It is the man determines what is said, not the words.
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
Determines
Determine
Speech
Words
Men
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
Especially the transcendental philosophy needs the leaven of humor to render it light and digestible.
Henry David Thoreau
I live in the angle of a leaden wall, into whose composition was poured a little alloy of bell-metal. Often, in the repose of my mid-day, there reaches my ears a confused tintinnabulum from without. It is the noise of my contemporaries.
Henry David Thoreau
By what a delicate and far-stretched contribution every island is made! What an enterprise of nature thus to lay the foundations of and to build up the future continent, of golden and silver sands and the ruins of forests, with ant-like industry.
Henry David Thoreau
It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious.
Henry David Thoreau
Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion.
Henry David Thoreau
Every man is the builder of a temple called his body.
Henry David Thoreau
It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.
Henry David Thoreau
Nearest to all things is that power which fashions their being. Next to us the grandest laws are constantly being executed. Next to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are.
Henry David Thoreau
The silence sings. It is musical. I remember a night when it was audible. I heard the unspeakable.
Henry David Thoreau
We have need to be earth-born as well as heaven-born, gegeneis, as was said of the Titans of old, or in a better sense than they.
Henry David Thoreau
We discover a new world every time we see the earth again after it has been covered for a season with snow.
Henry David Thoreau
When I go into a museum and see the mummies wrapped in their linen bandages, I see that the lives of men began to need reform as long ago as when they walked the earth. I come out into the streets, and meet men who declare that the time is near at hand for the redemption of the race. But as men lived in Thebes, so do they live in Dunstable today.
Henry David Thoreau
Since most of us spend our lives doing ordinary tasks, the most important thing is to carry them out extraordinarily well.
Henry David Thoreau
It is remarkable that there are few men so well employed, so much to their minds, but that a little money or fame would commonly buy them off from their present pursuit.
Henry David Thoreau
I love man-kind, but I hate the institutions of the dead unkind. Men execute nothing so faithfully as the wills of the dead, to the last codicil and letter. They rule this world, and the living are but their executors. Such foundation too have our lectures and our sermons, commonly.
Henry David Thoreau
Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution.
Henry David Thoreau
The way by which you may get money almost without exception leads downward.
Henry David Thoreau
I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we mingle with the herd of common men.
Henry David Thoreau
The virtues of a superior man are like the wind the virtues of a common man are like the grass the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends.
Henry David Thoreau
I feel as if my life had grown more outward when I can express it.
Henry David Thoreau
