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The fact which interests us most is the life of the naturalist. The purest science is still biographical. Nothing will dignify and elevate science while it is sundered so wholly from the moral life of its devotee.
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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Naturalist
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
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Henry D. Thoreau
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More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
Why should not our whole life and its scenery be actually thus fair and distinct? All our lives want a suitable background. They should at least, like the life of the anchorite, be as impressive to behold as objects in a desert, a broken shaft or crumbling mound against a limitless horizon.
Henry David Thoreau
Wherever a man goes, men will pursue him and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society.
Henry David Thoreau
How meanly and grossly do we deal with nature!
Henry David Thoreau
As long as there is satire, the poet is, as it were, particeps criminis.
Henry David Thoreau
A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.
Henry David Thoreau
The repugnance to animal food is not the effect of experience, but is an instinct. It appeared more beautiful to live low and farehard in many respects and though I never did so, I went far enough to please my imagination.
Henry David Thoreau
Good for the body is the work of the body, good for the soul the work of the soul, and good for either the work of the other.
Henry David Thoreau
If the day and night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal - that is your success.
Henry David Thoreau
Where there is a brave man, in the thickest of the fight, there is the post of honor.
Henry David Thoreau
A man is wise with the wisdom of his time only, and ignorant with its ignorance.
Henry David Thoreau
On the whole, Chaucer impresses us as greater than his reputation, and not a little like Homer and Shakespeare, for he would haveheld up his head in their company.
Henry David Thoreau
Every gazette brings accounts of the untutored freaks of the wind,--shipwrecks and hurricanes which the mariner and planter acceptas special or general providences but they touch our consciences, they remind us of our sins. Another deluge would disgrace mankind.
Henry David Thoreau
Not secondary to the sun, she gives us his blaze again, Void of its flame, and sheds a softer day... In Heaven queen she is among the spheres She, mistress-like, makes all things to be pure.
Henry David Thoreau
Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every shrub and tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit.
Henry David Thoreau
What is sour in the house a bracing walk in the woods makes sweet.
Henry David Thoreau
If we cannot sing of faith and triumph, we will sing our despair. We will be that kind of bird. There are day owls, and there arenight owls, and each is beautiful and even musical while about its business.
Henry David Thoreau
The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.
Henry David Thoreau
Many are concerned about the monuments of the West and the East -- to know who built them. For my part, I should like to know who in those days did not build them -- who were above such trifling.
Henry David Thoreau
All expression of truth does at length take this deep ethical form.
Henry David Thoreau
Unlike the Concord, the Merrimack is not a dead but a living stream, though it has less life within its waters and on its banks. It has a swift current, and, in this part of its course, a clayey bottom, almost no weeds, and comparatively few fishes.
Henry David Thoreau
