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The virtues of a superior man are like the wind the virtues of a common man are like the grass the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends.
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
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Ecologist
Environmentalist
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Naturalist
Philosopher
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Grass
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Common
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Superiors
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
It is not so important that many should be good as you, as that there be some absolute goodness somewhere for that will leaven the whole lump.
Henry David Thoreau
The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement.
Henry David Thoreau
Men go back to the mountains, as they go back to sailing ships at sea, because in the mountains and on the sea they must face up.
Henry David Thoreau
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
In wildness is the preservation of the world.
Henry David Thoreau
A journal is a repository for all those fragmentary ideas and odd scraps of information that might otherwise be lost and which some day might lead to more harmonious compositions.
Henry David Thoreau
Unless the human race perspire more than I do, there is no occasion to live by the sweat of their brow. If men cannot get on without money (the smallest amount will suffice), the truest method of earning it is by working as a laborer at one dollar per day. You are least dependent so I speak as an expert, having used several kinds of labor.
Henry David Thoreau
So far as my experience goes, travelers generally exaggerate the difficulties of the way. Like most evil, the difficulty is imaginary for what's the hurry?
Henry David Thoreau
Truth never turns to rebuke falsehood her own straightforwardness is the severest correction.
Henry David Thoreau
The sea, vast and wild as it is, bears thus the waste and wrecks of human art to its remotest shore. There is no telling what it may not vomit up.
Henry David Thoreau
Can we not do without the society of our gossip a little while, - have our own thoughts to cheer us?
Henry David Thoreau
I silently smiled at my incessant good fortune.
Henry David Thoreau
It is not all books that are as dull as their readers.
Henry David Thoreau
All these sounds, the crowing of cocks, the baying of dogs, and the hum of insects at noon, are the evidence of nature's health orsound state.
Henry David Thoreau
It would seem as if the very language of our parlors would lose all its nerve and degenerate into palaver wholly, our lives pass at such remoteness from its symbols, and its metaphors and tropes are necessarily so far fetched.
Henry David Thoreau
This fond reiteration of the oldest expressions of truth by the latest posterity, content with slightly and religiously retouchingthe old material, is the most impressive proof of a common humanity.
Henry David Thoreau
A thoroughbred business man cannot enter heartily upon the business of life without first looking into his accounts.
Henry David Thoreau
There is no ill which may not be dissipated, like the dark, if you let in a stronger light upon it.
Henry David Thoreau
In accumulating property for ourselves or our posterity, in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even, we are mortal but in dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change nor accident.
Henry David Thoreau
The culture of the hop ... so analagous to the culture and uses of the grape, may afford a theme for future poets.
Henry David Thoreau