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The stars are the jewels of the night, and perchance surpass anything which day has to show.
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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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Shows
Anything
Perchance
Surpass
Jewels
Stars
Show
Night
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
Scholars are wont to sell their birthright for a mess of learning.
Henry David Thoreau
He is the best sailor who can steer within the fewest points of the wind, and extract a motive power out of the greatest obstacles. Most begin to veer and tack as soon as the wind changes from aft, and as within the tropics it does not blow from all points of the compass, there are some harbors which they can never reach.
Henry David Thoreau
Shall a man not have his spring as well as the plants?
Henry David Thoreau
I do not speak to those who are well employed, in whatever circumstances, and they know whether they are well employed or not but mainly to the mass of men who are discontented, and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they might improve them.
Henry David Thoreau
There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hand. I love a broad margin to my life.
Henry David Thoreau
We are sometimes made aware of a kindness long passed, and realize that there have been times when our friends' thoughts of us were of so pure and lofty a character that they passed over us like the winds of heaven unnoticed when they treated us not as what we were, but as what we aspired to be.
Henry David Thoreau
Every man casts a shadow not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?
Henry David Thoreau
Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are.
Henry David Thoreau
No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer?
Henry David Thoreau
Why should not our whole life and its scenery be actually thus fair and distinct? All our lives want a suitable background. They should at least, like the life of the anchorite, be as impressive to behold as objects in a desert, a broken shaft or crumbling mound against a limitless horizon.
Henry David Thoreau
Economy is a subject which admits of being treated with levity, but it cannot so be disposed of.
Henry David Thoreau
To the sick, indeed, nature is sick, but to the well, a fountain of health.
Henry David Thoreau
All misfortune is but a stepping stone to fortune.
Henry David Thoreau
. . . we should be men first, and subjects afterward.
Henry David Thoreau
The experience of every past moment but belies the faith of each present.
Henry David Thoreau
Nature refuses to sympathize with our sorrow. She seems not to have provided for, but by a thousand contrivances against it.
Henry David Thoreau
Things don't change. We change.
Henry David Thoreau
The philanthropist too often surrounds mankind with the remembrance of his own cast- off griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy. We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease, and take care that this does not spread by contagion.
Henry David Thoreau
Yet we must try the harder, the less the prospect of success.
Henry David Thoreau
There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.
Henry David Thoreau
