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The improved means to the unimproved end.
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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Naturalist
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
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Improved
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More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
I love a life whose plot is simple.
Henry David Thoreau
We fritter away our energy and creativity . . . we get bogged down in the thick of thin things.
Henry David Thoreau
Men talk about Bible miracles because there is no miracle in their lives. Cease to gnaw that crust. There is ripe fruit over your head.
Henry David Thoreau
Do not suffer your life to be taken by newspapers.
Henry David Thoreau
There are two classes of authors: the one write the history of their times, the other their biography.
Henry David Thoreau
I would give all the wealth of the world, and all the deeds of all the heroes, for one true vision.
Henry David Thoreau
Morning work! By the blushes of Aurora and the music of Memnon, what should be man's morning work in this world?
Henry David Thoreau
I fear that he who walks over these fields a century hence will not know the pleasure of knocking off wild apples. Ah, poor man, there are many pleasures which he will not know!
Henry David Thoreau
The community has no bribe that will tempt a wise man.
Henry David Thoreau
History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning ofthings, which natural history might with reason assume to do but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,--when did burdock and plantain sprout first?
Henry David Thoreau
For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it (life), whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to 'glorify God and enjoy him forever.'
Henry David Thoreau
Man makes very much such a nest for his domestic animals, of withered grass and fodder, as the squirrels and many other wild creatures do for themselves.
Henry David Thoreau
Let go of the past and live the future . . . Live the life you imagined.
Henry David Thoreau
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. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house.
Henry David Thoreau
It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.
Henry David Thoreau
Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance they make the latitudes and longitudes.
Henry David Thoreau
Beside some philosophers of larger vision, Carlyle stands like an honest, half-despairing boy, grasping at some details only of their world systems.
Henry David Thoreau
Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God's property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.
Henry David Thoreau
The fire is the main comfort of the camp, whether in summer or winter
Henry David Thoreau
Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing.
Henry David Thoreau
