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Nature is an admirable schoolmistress.

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
Admirable
Nature

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one.
Henry David Thoreau
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The murmurs of many a famous river on the other side of the globe reach even to us here, as to more distant dwellers on its banksmany a poet's stream, floating the helms and shields of heroes on its bosom.
Henry David Thoreau
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For my own part, I commonly attend more to nature than to man, but any affecting human event may blind our eyes to natural objects. I was so absorbed in him as to be surprised whenever I detected the routine of the natural world surviving still, or met persons going about their affairs indifferent.
Henry David Thoreau
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In the summer we lay up a stock of experiences for the winter, as the squirrel of nuts?something for conversation in winter evenings.
Henry David Thoreau
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Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.
Henry David Thoreau
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Be it life or death, we crave only reality.
Henry David Thoreau
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Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life ... would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights' Entertainments.
Henry David Thoreau
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The only way to speak the truth is to speak lovingly.
Henry David Thoreau
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We often love to think now of the life of men on beaches,--at least in midsummer, when the weather is serene their sunny lives onthe sand, amid the beach-grass and bayberries, their companion a cow, their wealth a jag of driftwood or a few beach plums, and their music the surf and the peep of the beech-bird.
Henry David Thoreau
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The church is a sort of hospital for men's souls, and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies. Those who are taken into it live like pensioners in their Retreat or Sailors' Snug Harbor, where you may see a row of religious cripples sitting outside in sunny weather.
Henry David Thoreau
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It is a great pleasure to escape sometimes from the restless class of Reformers. What if these grievances exist? So do you and I.
Henry David Thoreau
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Your richest veins don't lie nearest the surface.
Henry David Thoreau
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There is one thought for the field, another for the house. I would have my thoughts, like wild apples, to be food for walkers, and will not warrant them to be palatable if tasted in the house.
Henry David Thoreau
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In some pictures of Provincetown the persons of the inhabitants are not drawn below the ankles, so much being supposed to be buried in the sand.
Henry David Thoreau
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Do what nobody else can do for you. Omit to do anything else.
Henry David Thoreau
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Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage.
Henry David Thoreau
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Every oak tree started out as a couple of nuts who stood their ground.
Henry David Thoreau
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The still youthful energies of the globe have only to be directed in their proper channel.
Henry David Thoreau
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The youth may build or plant or sail, only let him not be hindered from doing that which he tells me he would like to do.
Henry David Thoreau
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Many, no doubt, are well disposed, but sluggish by constitution and habit, and they cannot conceive of a man who is actuated by higher motives than they are. Accordingly they pronounce this man insane, for they know that they could never act as he does, as long as they are themselves.
Henry David Thoreau