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What exercise is to the body, employment is to the mind and morals.
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
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Naturalist
Philosopher
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Employment
Exercise
Moral
Body
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Mind
Morals
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake.
Henry David Thoreau
We saw one school-house in our walk, and listened to the sounds which issued from it but it appeared like a place where the process, not of enlightening, but of obfuscating the mind was going on, and the pupils received only so much light as could penetrate the shadow of the Catholic church.
Henry David Thoreau
I cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts in they are commonly ruled for dollars and cents.
Henry David Thoreau
While the very inhabitants of New England were thus fabling about the country a hundred miles inland, which was a terra incognitato them,... Champlain, the first Governor of Canada,... had already gone to war against the Iroquois in their forest forts, and penetrated to the Great Lakes and wintered there, before a Pilgrim had heard of New England.
Henry David Thoreau
I think of no news to tell you. It is a serene summer day here, all above the snow. The hens steal their nests, and I steal theireggs still, as formerly. This is what I do with the hands. Ah, labor,--it is a divine institution, and conversation with many men and hens.
Henry David Thoreau
On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world.
Henry David Thoreau
Not secondary to the sun, she gives us his blaze again, Void of its flame, and sheds a softer day... In Heaven queen she is among the spheres She, mistress-like, makes all things to be pure.
Henry David Thoreau
There is a slumbering subterranean fire in nature which never goes out, and which no cold can chill.
Henry David Thoreau
We have reason to be grateful for celestial phenomena, for they chiefly answer to the ideal in man.
Henry David Thoreau
Great God, I ask thee for no meaner pelf Than that I may not disappoint myself, That in my action I may soar as high As I can now discern with this clear eye.
Henry David Thoreau
Go not to the object let the object come to you.
Henry David Thoreau
In the religion of all nations a purity is hinted at, which, I fear, men never attain to.
Henry David Thoreau
In 1848, Thoreau went to jail for refusing, as a protest against the Mexican war, to pay his poll tax. When RW Emerson came to bail him out, Emerson said, 'Henry, what are you doing in there?' Thoreau quietly replied, 'Ralph, what are you doing out there?'
Henry David Thoreau
A little thought is sexton to all the world.
Henry David Thoreau
The Indian navigator naturally distinguishes by a name those parts of a stream where he has encountered quick water and forks, andagain, the lakes and smooth water where he can rest his weary arms, since those are the most interesting and more arable parts to him.
Henry David Thoreau
When will the world learn that a million men are of no importance compared with one man?
Henry David Thoreau
Men seem anxious to accomplish an orderly retreat through the centuries, earnestly rebuilding the works behind them, as they are battered down by the encroachments of time but while they loiter, they and their works both fall prey to the arch enemy.
Henry David Thoreau
We are a nation of politicians, concerned about the outmost defenses only of freedom. It is our children's children who may perchance be really free.
Henry David Thoreau
Methinks my own soul must be a bright invisible green.
Henry David Thoreau
Removing the weeds, putting fresh soil about the bean stems, and encouraging this weed which I had sown, making the yellow soil express its summer thought in bean leaves and blossoms rather than in wormwood and piper and millet grass, making the earth say beans instead of grass, - this was my daily work.
Henry David Thoreau