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A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.
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
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Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Chance
Wish
Power
Prevail
Right
Disobedience
Men
Mercy
Majority
Leave
Wise
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it.
Henry David Thoreau
How many things are now at loose ends! Who knows which way the wind will blow tomorrow?
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Friendship takes place between those who have an affinity for one another, and is a perfectly natural and inevitable result. No professions nor advances will avail.... It is a drama in which the parties have no part to act.
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All questions rely on the present for their solution. Time measures nothing but itself. The word that is written may be postponed,but not that on the lip. If this is what the occasion says, let the occasion say it.
Henry David Thoreau
Methinks I am never quite committed, never wholly the creature of my moods, but always to some extent their critic. My only integral experience is in my vision. I see, perchance, with more integrity than I feel.
Henry David Thoreau
In society you will not find health, but in nature. Unless our feet at least stood in the midst of nature, all our faces would bepale and livid. Society is always diseased, and the best is the most so.
Henry David Thoreau
The schools begin with what they call the elements, and where do they end?
Henry David Thoreau
No man who acts from a sense of duty ever puts the lesser duty above the greater. No man has the desire and the ability to work onhigh things, but he has also the ability to build himself a high staging.
Henry David Thoreau
The student who secures his coveted leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisure fruitful.
Henry David Thoreau
The poet will write for his peers alone. He will remember only that he saw truth and beauty from his position, and expect the time when a vision as broad shall overlook the same field as freely.
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
Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify.
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 need only travel enough to give our intellects an airing.
Henry David Thoreau
I know of no redeeming qualities in myself but a sincere love for some things, and when I am reproved I fall back on to this ground.
Henry David Thoreau
It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.
Henry David Thoreau
The great art of life is how to turn the surplus life of the soul into life for the body.
Henry David Thoreau
The virtue of making two blades of grass grow where only one grew before does not begin to be superhuman.
Henry David Thoreau
For more than five years I maintained myself thus solely by the labour of my hands, and I found, that by working about six weeks in a year, I could meet all the expenses of living.
Henry David Thoreau
To the virtuous man, the universe is the only sanctum sanctorum, and the penetralia of the temple are the broad noon of his existence.
Henry David Thoreau
