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My actual life is a fact, in view of which I have no occasion to congratulate myself but for my faith and aspiration I have respect. It is from these that I speak.

Henry David Thoreau

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Henry David Thoreau
Age: 44 †
Born: 1817
Born: July 12
Died: 1862
Died: May 6
Abolitionist
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Autobiographer
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Ecologist
Environmentalist
Essayist
Naturalist
Philosopher
Poet
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
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More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.
Henry David Thoreau
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Most people dread finding out when they come to die that they have never really lived.
Henry David Thoreau
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A fact may blossom into a truth.
Henry David Thoreau
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All change is a miracle to contemplate, but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.
Henry David Thoreau
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The theories and speculations of men concern us more than their puny accomplishment. It is with a certain coldness and languor that we loiter about the actual and so-called practical.
Henry David Thoreau
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Long enough I had heard of irrelevant things now at length I was glad to make acquaintance with the light that dwells in rotten wood. Where is all your knowledge gone to? It evaporates completely, for it has no depth.
Henry David Thoreau
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Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. She exists for no other end. Do not resist. With the least inclination to be well, we should not be sick.
Henry David Thoreau
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To speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.
Henry David Thoreau
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The man who thrusts his manners upon me does as if he were to insist on introducing me to his cabinet of curiosities, when I wished to see himself.
Henry David Thoreau
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We find it difficult to choose our direction because it does not yet exist distinctly in our idea.
Henry David Thoreau
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Especially the transcendental philosophy needs the leaven of humor to render it light and digestible.
Henry David Thoreau
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We slander the hyena man is the fiercest and cruelest animal.
Henry David Thoreau
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I mean that they (students) should not play life, or study it merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning to end. How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living? Methinks this would exercise their minds as much as mathematics.
Henry David Thoreau
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What a fool he must be who thinks that his El Dorado is anywhere but where he lives.
Henry David Thoreau
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What would we not give for some great poem to read now, which would be in harmony with the scenery,--for if men read aright, methinks they would never read anything but poems. No history nor philosophy can supply their place.
Henry David Thoreau
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Here or nowhere is our heaven.
Henry David Thoreau
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At least let us have healthy books.
Henry David Thoreau
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All that is told of the sea has a fabulous sound to an inhabitant of the land and all its products have a certain fabulous quality, as if they belonged to another planet.
Henry David Thoreau
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The gods are partial to no era, but steadily shines their light in the heavens, while the eye of the beholder is turned to stone.There was but the sun and the eye from the first. The ages have not added a new ray to the one, nor altered a fibre of the other.
Henry David Thoreau
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The earth I tread on is not a dead inert mass. It is a body, has a spirit is organic and fluid to the influence of its spirit and to whatever particle of the spirit is in me.
Henry David Thoreau