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As we looked up in silence to those distant lights, we were reminded that it was a rare imagination which first taught that the stars are worlds, and had conferred a great benefit on mankind.
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
Philosopher
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Imagination
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Stars
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More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
Henry David Thoreau
I did not know that we had ever quarreled.
Henry David Thoreau
Many are concerned about the monuments of the West and the East -- to know who built them. For my part, I should like to know who in those days did not build them -- who were above such trifling.
Henry David Thoreau
You may raise enough money to tunnel a mountain, but you cannot raise money enough to hire a man who is minding his own business.
Henry David Thoreau
What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary?
Henry David Thoreau
It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such. It is the bog in our brains and bowels, the primitive vigor of Nature in us, that inspires that dream. I shall never find in the wilds of Labrador a greater wildness than in some recess of Concord.
Henry David Thoreau
Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends... Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.
Henry David Thoreau
Left to herself, nature is always more or less civilized, and delights in a certain refinement but where the axe has encroached upon the edge of the forest, the dead and unsightly limbs of the pine, which she had concealed with green banks of verdure, are exposed to sight.
Henry David Thoreau
My vicinity affords many good walks and though for so many years I have walked almost every day, and sometimes for several days together, I have not yet exhausted them. An absolutely new prospect is a great happiness, and I can still get this any afternoon. Two or three hours' walking will carry me to as strange a country as I ever expect to see.
Henry David Thoreau
Many men walk by day few walk by night. It is a different season.
Henry David Thoreau
Undoubtedly, in the most brilliant successes, the first rank is always sacrificed.
Henry David Thoreau
Read not the Times, read the Eternities.
Henry David Thoreau
I say, break the law.
Henry David Thoreau
Fame is not just. She never finely or discriminatingly praises, but coarsely hurrahs.
Henry David Thoreau
Even trees do not die without a groan.
Henry David Thoreau
I feel as if my life had grown more outward when I can express it.
Henry David Thoreau
If one hesitates in his path, let him not proceed. Let him respect his doubts, for doubts, too, may have some divinity in them.
Henry David Thoreau
Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution.
Henry David Thoreau
In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely as the pursuits of the simpler nations are still the sports of the more artificial.
Henry David Thoreau
For my own part, I commonly attend more to nature than to man, but any affecting human event may blind our eyes to natural objects. I was so absorbed in him as to be surprised whenever I detected the routine of the natural world surviving still, or met persons going about their affairs indifferent.
Henry David Thoreau
