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The man who does not betake himself at once and desperately to sawing is called a loafer, though he may be knocking at the doors of heaven all the while.
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
Diarist
Ecologist
Environmentalist
Essayist
Naturalist
Philosopher
Poet
Translator
Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Though
Heaven
Loafer
Doe
Sawing
May
Loafers
Work
Knocking
Men
Desperately
Doors
Called
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.
Henry David Thoreau
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
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
When the State wishes to endow an academy or university, it grants it a tract of forest land: one saw represents an academy, a gang, a university.
Henry David Thoreau
Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows.
Henry David Thoreau
In my short experience of human life, the outward obstacles, if there were any such, have not been living men, but the institutions of the dead.
Henry David Thoreau
Every man will be a poet if he can otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the poet.
Henry David Thoreau
I will come to you, my friend, when I no longer need you. Then you will find a palace, not an almshouse.
Henry David Thoreau
Alas! the culture of an Irishman is an enterprise to be undertaken with a sort of moral bog hoe.
Henry David Thoreau
The dry grasses are not dead for me. A beautiful form has as much life at one season as another.
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
In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, they had better aim at something high.
Henry David Thoreau
We shall be reduced to gnaw the very crust of the earth for nutriment.
Henry David Thoreau
Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.
Henry David Thoreau
As a preacher, I should be prompted to tell men, not so much how to get their wheat bread cheaper, as of the bread of life compared with which that is bran. Let a man only taste these loaves, and he becomes a skillful economist at once.
Henry David Thoreau
If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose.
Henry David Thoreau
Art can never match the luxury and superfluity of Nature. In the former all is seen it cannot afford concealed wealth, and is niggardly in comparison but Nature, even when she is scant and thin outwardly, satisfies us still by the assurance of a certain generosity at the roots.
Henry David Thoreau
We are all of us more or less active physiognomists.
Henry David Thoreau
I do not speak to those who are well employed, in whatever circumstances, and they know whether they are well employed or not but mainly to the mass of men who are discontented, and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they might improve them.
Henry David Thoreau
Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at Nature directly, but only with the side of his eye. He must look through and beyond her.
Henry David Thoreau
