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To have made even one person's life a little better, that is to succeed.
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
Little
Even
Made
Philanthropy
Life
Succeed
Littles
Persons
Person
Better
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
When I go out of the house for a walk, uncertain as yet whither I will bend my steps, [I] submit myself to my instinct to decide for me.
Henry David Thoreau
I am struck by the simplicity of light in the atmosphere in the autumn, as if the earth absorbed none, and out of this profusion of dazzling light came the autumnal tints.
Henry David Thoreau
Knowledge does not come to us in details, but in flashes of light from heaven.
Henry David Thoreau
Many college text-books, which were a weariness and stumbling-block when I studied, I have since read a little with pleasure and profit.
Henry David Thoreau
Talk about slavery! It is not the peculiar institution of the South. It exists wherever men are bought and sold, wherever a man allows himself to be made a mere thing or a tool, and surrenders his inalienable rights of reason and conscience. Indeed, this slavery is more complete than that which enslaves the body alone.
Henry David Thoreau
We are ashamed of our fear for we know that a righteous man would not suspect danger nor incur any. Wherever a man feels fear, there is an avenger.
Henry David Thoreau
The doctors are all agreed that I am suffering for want of society. Was never a case like it. First, I did not know that I was suffering at all. Secondly, as an Irishman might say, I had thought it was indigestion of the society I got.
Henry David Thoreau
Whatever beauty we behold, the more it is distant, serene, and cold, the purer and more durable it is. It is better to warm ourselves with ice than with fire.
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
Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. Why, nature is but another name for health.
Henry David Thoreau
If we cannot sing of faith and triumph, we will sing our despair. We will be that kind of bird. There are day owls, and there arenight owls, and each is beautiful and even musical while about its business.
Henry David Thoreau
If however the law is so promulgated that it of necessity makes you an agent of injustices against another, then I say to you ... break the law.
Henry David Thoreau
Like speaks to like only labor to labor, philosophy to philosophy, criticism to criticism, poetry to poetry. Literature speaks how much still to the past, how little to the future, how much to the East, how little to the West.
Henry David Thoreau
To be awake is to be completely alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake.
Henry David Thoreau
Many are concerned about the monuments of the West and the East -- to know who built them. For my part, I should like to know who in those days did not build them -- who were above such trifling.
Henry David Thoreau
If you chance to live and move and have your being in that thin stratum in which the events that make the news transpire,--thinnerthan the paper on which it is printed,--then these things will fill the world for you but if you soar above or dive below that plane, you cannot remember nor be reminded of them.
Henry David Thoreau
Eastward I go only by force but westward I go free.
Henry David Thoreau
If a man believes and expects great things of himself, it makes no odds where you put him, or what you show him . . he will be surrounded by grandeur.
Henry David Thoreau
If we dealt only with the false and dishonest, we should at last forget how to speak truth.
Henry David Thoreau
The still youthful energies of the globe have only to be directed in their proper channel.
Henry David Thoreau
