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We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the filed, but not to describe human character.

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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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
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Henry D. Thoreau
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More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however, ancient, can be trusted without proof. ... Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.
Henry David Thoreau
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Here or nowhere is our heaven.
Henry David Thoreau
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If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.
Henry David Thoreau
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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
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I do not know at first what it is that harms me. The men and things of to-day are wont to be fairer and truer in to-morrow's memory.
Henry David Thoreau
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Thank God, they cannot cut down the clouds!
Henry David Thoreau
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Friends will be much apart. They will respect more each other's privacy than their communion.
Henry David Thoreau
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One may discover a new side to his most intimate friend when for the first time he hears him speak in public. He will be stranger to him as he is more familiar to the audience. The longest intimacy could not foretell how he would behave then
Henry David Thoreau
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In 1848, Thoreau went to jail for refusing, as a protest against the Mexican war, to pay his poll tax. When RW Emerson came to bail him out, Emerson said, 'Henry, what are you doing in there?' Thoreau quietly replied, 'Ralph, what are you doing out there?'
Henry David Thoreau
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We do not live by justice, but by grace.
Henry David Thoreau
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Only nature has a right to grieve perpetually, for she only is innocent. Soon the ice will melt, and the blackbirds sing along the river which he frequented, as pleasantly as ever. The same everlasting serenity will appear in this face of God, and we will not be sorrowful, if he is not.
Henry David Thoreau
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I once found a kernel of corn in the middle of a deep wood by Walden, tucked in behind a lichen on a pine, about as high as my head, either by a crow or a squirrel. It was a mile at least from any corn-field.
Henry David Thoreau
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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
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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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Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice.
Henry David Thoreau
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Some simple dishes recommend themselves to our imaginations as well as palates.
Henry David Thoreau
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A Friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us.
Henry David Thoreau
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It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.
Henry David Thoreau
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The universe expects every man to do his duty in his parallel of latitude.
Henry David Thoreau
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Thus the State never intentionally confronts a man's sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion.
Henry David Thoreau