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Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure.
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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Philosopher
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Life
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More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
The researcher is more memorable than the researched.
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What is man but a mass of thawing clay?
Henry David Thoreau
The words of some men are thrown forcibly against you and adhere like burrs.
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To inherit property is not to be born - it is to be still-born, rather.
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The only fruit which even much living yields seems to be often only some trivial success,--the ability to do some slight thing better. We make conquest only of husks and shells for the most part,--at least apparently,--but sometimes these are cinnamon and spices, you know.
Henry David Thoreau
Eastward I go only by force but westward I go free.
Henry David Thoreau
I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a multitude? They can only force me who obey a higher law than I.... I do not hear of men being forced to live this way or that by masses of men. What sort of life were that to live?
Henry David Thoreau
It is true, we are such poor navigators that our thoughts, for the most part, stand off and on upon a harborless coast, are conversant only with the bights of the bays of poesy, or steer for the public ports of entry, and go into the dry docks of science, where they merely refit for this world, and no natural currents concur to individualize them.
Henry David Thoreau
I have always endeavored to acquire strict business habits they are indispensable to every man. If your trade is with the Celestial Empire, then some small counting house on the coast, in some Salem harbor, will be fixture enough.
Henry David Thoreau
Most men cry better than they speak. You get more nurture out of them by pinching than addressing them.
Henry David Thoreau
You don't know your testament when you see it.
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
One who knew how to appropriate the true value of this world would be the poorest man in it. The poor rich man! all he has is whathe has bought.
Henry David Thoreau
I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.
Henry David Thoreau
The eye is the jewel of the body.
Henry David Thoreau
Men are as innocent as the morning to the unsuspicious.
Henry David Thoreau
There is no remedy for love but to love more.
Henry David Thoreau
As a man grows older, his ability to sit still and follow indoor occupations increases. He grows vespertinal in his habits as theevening of life approaches, till at last he comes forth only just before sundown, and gets all the walk that he requires in half an hour.
Henry David Thoreau
Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows.
Henry David Thoreau
I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least - and it is commonly more than that - sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements.
Henry David Thoreau
