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In the religion of all nations a purity is hinted at, which, I fear, men never attain to.
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
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Ecologist
Environmentalist
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Naturalist
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Nations
Religion
Fear
Never
Men
Hinted
Attain
Purity
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
Every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us.
Henry David Thoreau
As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.
Henry David Thoreau
A true Friendship is as wise as it is tender. The parties to it yield implicitly to the guidance of their love, and know no otherlaw nor kindness.
Henry David Thoreau
Though the hen should sit all day, she could lay only one egg, and, besides, would not have picked up materials for another.
Henry David Thoreau
When the chopper would praise a pine, he will commonly tell you that the one he cut was so big that a yoke of oxen stood on its stump as if that were what the pine had grown for, to become the footstool of oxen.
Henry David Thoreau
It seems to me that the god that is commonly worshipped in civilized countries is not at all divine, though he bears a divine name, but is the overwhelming authority and respectability of mankind combined. Men reverence one another, not yet God.
Henry David Thoreau
The necessity of labor and conversation with many men and things to the scholar is rarely well remembered.
Henry David Thoreau
Philosophy, having crept clinging to the rocks so far, puts out its feelers many ways in vain.
Henry David Thoreau
There is something servile in the habit of seeking after a law which we may obey. We may study the laws of matter at and for our convenience, but a successful life knows no law.
Henry David Thoreau
The kind uncles and aunts of the race are more esteemed than its true spiritual fathers and mothers.
Henry David Thoreau
He may travel who can subsist on the wild fruits and game of the most cultivated country.
Henry David Thoreau
Mythology is the crop which the Old World bore before its soil was exhausted.
Henry David Thoreau
I do not value any view of the universe into which man and the institutions of man enter very largely and absorb much of the attention. Man is but the place where I stand, and the prospect hence is infinite.
Henry David Thoreau
The same soil is good for men and for trees. A man's health requires as many acres of meadow to his prospect as his farm does loads of muck.
Henry David Thoreau
In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify.
Henry David Thoreau
As for Doing-good, that is one of the professions which are full.
Henry David Thoreau
Trade and commerce, if they were not made of Indian rubber, would never manage to bounce over the obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way.
Henry David Thoreau
The imagination never forgets it is a re-membering. It is not foundationless, but most reasonable, and it alone uses all the knowledge of the intellect.
Henry David Thoreau
Improve every opportunity to be melancholy.
Henry David Thoreau
I must walk toward Oregon, and not toward Europe. And that way the nation is moving, and I may say that mankind progress from east to west. We go eastward to realize history and study the works of art and literature, retracing the steps of the race we go westward as into the future, with a spirit of enterprise and adventure.
Henry David Thoreau