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It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws.
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
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Ecologist
Environmentalist
Essayist
Naturalist
Philosopher
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Science
Partial
Childish
Coincidence
Discovery
Mere
Laws
Rest
Extraneous
Law
Coincidences
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
A person who chooses to die or to risk death demonstrates that there are values, principles, maxims, that are more valuable to him than is life itself. In short, he places his immortal self above his mortal self. Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.
Henry David Thoreau
Nature is fair in proportion as the youth is pure. The heavens and the earth are one flower the earth is the calyx, the heavens the corolla.
Henry David Thoreau
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
Henry David Thoreau
When some of my friends have asked me anxiously about their boys, whether they should let them hunt, I have answered yes-- remembering that it was one of the best parts of my education-- make them hunters.
Henry David Thoreau
There may be an excess of cultivation as well as of anything else, until civilization becomes pathetic. A highly cultivated man,--all whose bones can be bent! whose heaven-born virtues are but good manners!
Henry David Thoreau
For if we take the ages into our account, may there not be a civilization going on among brutes as well as men?
Henry David Thoreau
It is an unfortunate discovery certainly, that of a law which binds us where we did not know before that we were bound.
Henry David Thoreau
Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now.
Henry David Thoreau
We slander the hyena man is the fiercest and cruelest animal.
Henry David Thoreau
Truly, our greatest blessings are very cheap.
Henry David Thoreau
Far travel, very far travel, or travail, comes near to the worth of staying at home.
Henry David Thoreau
I have been breaking silence these twenty-three years and have hardly made a rent in it.
Henry David Thoreau
Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, and hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance.
Henry David Thoreau
We waded so gently and reverently, or we pulled together so smoothly, that the fishes of thought were not scared from the stream, nor feared any angler on the bank, but came and went grandly, like the clouds which came and went on the western sky, and the mother-o'-pearl flocks which sometimes form and dissolve there.
Henry David Thoreau
Comparatively, we can excuse any offense against the heart, but not against the imagination. The imagination knows--nothing escapes its glance from out its eyry--and it controls the breast.
Henry David Thoreau
True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.
Henry David Thoreau
Every man is the builder of a temple called his body.
Henry David Thoreau
There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man.
Henry David Thoreau
Goodness is the only investment that never fails.
Henry David Thoreau
If we dealt only with the false and dishonest, we should at last forget how to speak truth.
Henry David Thoreau
