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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
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Physiognomy
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More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, they had better aim at something high.
Henry David Thoreau
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I walk out into a nature such as the old prophets and poets Menu, Moses, Homer, Chaucer, walked in. You may name it America, but it is not America. Neither Americus Vespucius, nor Columbus, nor the rest were the discoverers of it. There is a truer account of it in Mythology than in any history of America so called that I have seen.
Henry David Thoreau
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We hate the kindness which we understand.
Henry David Thoreau
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As a man grows older, his ability to sit still and follow indoor occupations increases. He grows vespertinal in his habits as theevening of life approaches, till at last he comes forth only just before sundown, and gets all the walk that he requires in half an hour.
Henry David Thoreau
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The greatest tragedy in life is to spend your whole life fishing only to discover it was never fish that you were after.
Henry David Thoreau
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Men go back to the mountains, as they go back to sailing ships at sea, because in the mountains and on the sea they must face up.
Henry David Thoreau
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City life is millions of people being lonesome together.
Henry David Thoreau
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To inherit property is not to be born - it is to be still-born, rather.
Henry David Thoreau
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Wherever a man separates from the multitude, and goes his own way in this mood, there indeed is a fork in the road, though ordinary travelers may see only a gap in the paling. His solitary path across lots will turn out the higher way of the two.
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 Library is a wilderness of books.
Henry David Thoreau
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The man who takes the liberty to live is superior to all the laws, by virtue of his relation to the lawmaker.
Henry David Thoreau
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The best thing a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those schemes which he entertained when he was poor
Henry David Thoreau
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What are men celebrating? They are all on a committee of arrangements, and hourly expect a speech from somebody. God is only the president of the day, and Webster is his orator.
Henry David Thoreau
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A man can suffocate on courtesy.
Henry David Thoreau
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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
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The keeping of bees is like the direction of sunbeams.
Henry David Thoreau
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It must be confessed that horses at present work too exclusively for men, rarely men for horses and the brute degenerates in man's society.
Henry David Thoreau
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There is one thought for the field, another for the house. I would have my thoughts, like wild apples, to be food for walkers, and will not warrant them to be palatable if tasted in the house.
Henry David Thoreau
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Nowadays almost all man's improvements, so called, as the building of houses and the cutting down of the forest and of all large trees, simply deform the landscape, and make it more and more tame and cheap.
Henry David Thoreau