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Men spend the best parts of their lives earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it.
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
Parts
Best
Spend
Men
Liberty
Least
Enjoy
Questionable
Lives
Earning
Money
Independence
Order
Valuable
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
Water is a pioneer which the settler follows, taking advantage of its improvements.
Henry David Thoreau
Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man.
Henry David Thoreau
It is dry, hazy June weather. We are more of the earth, farther from heaven these days.
Henry David Thoreau
I lose my respect for the man who can make the mystery of sex the subject of a coarse jest, yet when you speak earnestly and seriously on the subject, is silent.
Henry David Thoreau
The improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man's existence: as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors.
Henry David Thoreau
Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.
Henry David Thoreau
Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance they make the latitudes and longitudes.
Henry David Thoreau
Every people have gods to suit their circumstances.
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We seem to think that the earth must go through the ordeal of sheep-pasturage before it is habitable by man.
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With wisdom we shall learn liberality.
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Waves of a serene life pass over us from time to time, like flakes of sunlight over the fields in cloudy weather.
Henry David Thoreau
The gold-digger is the enemy of the honest laborer, whatever checks and compensations there may be. It is not enough to tell me that you worked hard to get your gold. So does the Devil work hard. The way of transgressors may be hard in many respects.
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Many of the phenomena of Winter are suggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We are accustomed to hear this king described as a rude and boisterous tyrant but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of Summer.
Henry David Thoreau
What a fool he must be who thinks that his El Dorado is anywhere but where he lives.
Henry David Thoreau
Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life ... would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights' Entertainments.
Henry David Thoreau
We often love to think now of the life of men on beaches,--at least in midsummer, when the weather is serene their sunny lives onthe sand, amid the beach-grass and bayberries, their companion a cow, their wealth a jag of driftwood or a few beach plums, and their music the surf and the peep of the beech-bird.
Henry David Thoreau
A man sees only what concerns him.... How much more, then, it requires different intentions of the eye and of the mind to attend to different departments of knowledge! How differently the poet and the naturalist look at objects!
Henry David Thoreau
One of the most attractive things about the flowers is their beautiful reserve.
Henry David Thoreau
Fame is not just. She never finely or discriminatingly praises, but coarsely hurrahs.
Henry David Thoreau
Today...the bluebirds, old and young, have revisited their box, as if they would fain repeat the summer without intervention of winter, if Nature would let them.
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