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I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute Freedom and Wildness, as contrasted with a Freedom and Culture merely civil, - to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society.

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
Translator
Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Part
Word
Wildness
Men
Society
Member
Rather
Civil
Freedom
Absolutes
Wish
Absolute
Culture
Merely
Contrasted
Speak
Regard
Inhabitant
Nature
Members
Parcel

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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Every day a new picture is painted and framed, held up for half an hour, in such lights as the Great Artist chooses, and then withdrawn, and the curtain falls. And then the sun goes down, and long the afterglow gives light.
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For the most part, we are not where we are, but in a false position. Through an infirmity of our natures, we suppose a case, and put ourselves into it, and hence are in two cases at the same time, and it is doubly difficult to get out.
Henry David Thoreau
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The strongest wind cannot stagger a Spirit it is a Spirit's breath. A just man's purpose cannot be split on any Grampus or material rock, but itself will split rocks till it succeeds.
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We never conceive the greatness of our fates.
Henry David Thoreau
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If Columbus was the first to discover the islands, Americus Vespucius and Cabot, and the Puritans, and we their descendants, havediscovered only the shores of America.
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Only the defeated and deserters go to war.
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I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality.
Henry David Thoreau
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A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of any prince.
Henry David Thoreau
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The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.
Henry David Thoreau
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Simplify, simplify, simplify.
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If I ever see more clearly at one time than at another, the medium through which I see is clearer.
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I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home. I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful.
Henry David Thoreau
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If within the sophisticated man there is not an unsophisticated one, then he is but one of the devil's angels.
Henry David Thoreau
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To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.
Henry David Thoreau
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What fire could ever equal the sunshine of a winter's day?
Henry David Thoreau
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Write while the heat is in you.
Henry David Thoreau
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The sail, the play of its pulse so like our own lives: so thin and yet so full of life, so noiseless when it labors hardest, so noisy and impatient when least effective.
Henry David Thoreau
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The forests are held cheap after the white pine has been culled out and the explorers and hunters pray for rain only to clear theatmosphere of smoke.
Henry David Thoreau
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Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads.
Henry David Thoreau
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This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments?
Henry David Thoreau