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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
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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
Essayist
Naturalist
Philosopher
Poet
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Men
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Eye
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Naturalist
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Attend
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Poet
Concerns
Mind
Objects
Differently
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however, ancient, can be trusted without proof. ... Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.
Henry David Thoreau
Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old return to them. Things do not change we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society.
Henry David Thoreau
Where is the unexplored land but in our own untried enterprises? To an adventurous spirit any place--London, New York, Worcester, or his own yard--is unexplored land, to seek which Frémont and Kane travel so far. To a sluggish and defeated spirit even the Great Basin and the Polaris are trivial places.
Henry David Thoreau
While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.
Henry David Thoreau
We cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun he is no more humane, while his education has been sadly neglected.
Henry David Thoreau
The universe expects every man to do his duty in his parallel of latitude.
Henry David Thoreau
God is alone,-but the devil, he is far from being alone he sees a great deal of company he is legion.
Henry David Thoreau
Every nail driven should be as another rivet in the machine of the universe, you carrying on the work.
Henry David Thoreau
Men have come to such a pass that they frequently starve, not for want of necessaries, but for want of luxuries.
Henry David Thoreau
We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success. What we do best or most perfectly is what we have most thoroughly learned by the longest practice, and at length it falls from us without our notice, as a leaf from a tree.
Henry David Thoreau
Be not merely good. Be good for something.
Henry David Thoreau
One can hardly imagine a more healthful employment, or one more favorable to contemplation and the observation of nature.
Henry David Thoreau
Who that has heard a strain of music feared then lest he should speak extravagantly any more forever?
Henry David Thoreau
Nearest to all things is that power which fashions their being. Next to us the grandest laws are constantly being executed. Next to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are.
Henry David Thoreau
I would give all the wealth of the world, and all the deeds of all the heroes, for one true vision.
Henry David Thoreau
Mythology is the crop which the Old World bore before its soil was exhausted.
Henry David Thoreau
In the unbending of the arm to do the deed there is experience worth all the maxims in the world.
Henry David Thoreau
There are secret articles in our treaties with the gods, of more importance than all the rest, which the historian can never know.
Henry David Thoreau
How little do the most wonderful inventions of modern times detain us. They insult nature. Every machine, or particular application, seems a slight outrage against universal laws.
Henry David Thoreau
My Friend is that one whom I can associate with my choicest thought.
Henry David Thoreau