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Heroes are often the most ordinary of men.
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
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Hero
Ordinary
Often
Men
Heroes
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
Much of our poetry has the very best manners, but no character.
Henry David Thoreau
Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
Henry David Thoreau
It is remarkable how long men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pond without taking the trouble to sound it.
Henry David Thoreau
If one listens to the faintest but constant suggestions of his genius, which are certainly true, he sees not to what extremes, or even insanity, it may lead him and yet that way, as he grows more resolute and faithful, his road lies.
Henry David Thoreau
The whole tree itself is but one leaf, and rivers are still vaster leaves whose pulp is intervening earth, and towns and cities are the ova of insects in their axils.
Henry David Thoreau
The savage lives simply through ignorance and idleness or laziness, but the philosopher lives simply through wisdom.
Henry David Thoreau
In the religion of all nations a purity is hinted at, which, I fear, men never attain to.
Henry David Thoreau
It is impossible to give a soldier a good education without making him a deserter. His natural foe is the government that drills him.
Henry David Thoreau
There is an orientalism in the most restless pioneer, and the farthest west is but the farthest east.
Henry David Thoreau
Was awakened in the night to a strain of music dying away, - passing travellers singing. My being was so expanded and infinitely and divinely related for a brief season that I saw how unexhausted, how almost wholly unimproved, was man's capacity for a divine life. When I remembered what a narrow and finite life I should anon awake to!
Henry David Thoreau
Not till we are completely lost, or turned round, do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature.
Henry David Thoreau
Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.
Henry David Thoreau
I do not know how to distinguish between waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?
Henry David Thoreau
There is not so good an understanding between any two, but the exposure by the one of a serious fault in the other will produce a misunderstanding in proportion to its heinousness.
Henry David Thoreau
Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is a nest egg, by the side of which more will be laid.
Henry David Thoreau
When I meet a government which says to me, Your money or your life, why should I be in haste to give it my money?
Henry David Thoreau
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
The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly. They make shift to live merely by conformity, practically as their fathers did, and are in no sense the progenitors of a nobler race of men.
Henry David Thoreau
As for health, consider yourself well.
Henry David Thoreau
Though my life is low, if my spirit looks upward habitually at an elevated angle, it is as if it were redeemed. When the desire to be better than we are is really sincere we are instantly elevated, and so far better already.
Henry David Thoreau
