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All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be.
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
Men
Motivational
Rather
Something
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
The Indian...stands free and unconstrained in Nature, is her inhabitant and not her guest, and wears her easily and gracefully. But the civilized man has the habits of the house. His house is a prison.
Henry David Thoreau
As for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.
Henry David Thoreau
Today you may write a chapter on the advantages of traveling, and tomorrow you may write another chapter on the advantages of not traveling.
Henry David Thoreau
There is absolutely no common sense, it is common non-sense.
Henry David Thoreau
Music is perpetual, and only the hearing is intermittent.
Henry David Thoreau
It behooves every man to see that his influence is on the side of justice, and let the courts make their own characters.
Henry David Thoreau
Many of the phenomena of Winter are suggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We are accustomed to hear this king described as a rude and boisterous tyrant but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of Summer.
Henry David Thoreau
If there were one who lived wholly without the use of money, the State itself would hesitate to demand it of him. But the rich man--not to make any invidious comparison--is always sold to the institution which makes him rich.... Thus his moral ground is taken from under his feet.
Henry David Thoreau
If a man were to place himself in an attitude to bear manfully the greatest evil that can be inflicted on him, he would find suddenly that there was no such evil to bear his brave back would go a-begging.
Henry David Thoreau
He who is conversant with the supernal powers will not worship these inferior deities of the wind, waves, tide, and sunshine. Butwe would not disparage the importance of such calculations as we have described. They are truths in physics because they are true in ethics.
Henry David Thoreau
We make needless ado about capital punishment,--taking lives, when there is no life to take.
Henry David Thoreau
Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towardsrecognizing and organizing the rights of man?
Henry David Thoreau
Hear! hear! screamed the jay from a neighboring tree, where I had heard a tittering for some time, winter has a concentrated and nutty kernel, if you know where to look for it.
Henry David Thoreau
How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.
Henry David Thoreau
What a glorious time they must have in that wilderness, far from mankind and election day!
Henry David Thoreau
You cannot hear music and noise at the same time.
Henry David Thoreau
Art may varnish and gild, but it can do no more.
Henry David Thoreau
The gods cannot misunderstand, man cannot explain.
Henry David Thoreau
In sane moments we regard only the facts, the case that is.
Henry David Thoreau
He is blessed over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life in remembering the past
Henry David Thoreau