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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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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
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Action
Theories
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Accomplishment
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Loiter
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Actual
Speculations
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Puny
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Speculation
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
The frontiers are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man fronts a fact.
Henry David Thoreau
I have a great deal of company in my house especially in the morning, when nobody calls.
Henry David Thoreau
We need the tonic of the wilderness, to wade sometimes in the marsh where the bitten and the meadow hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.
Henry David Thoreau
If you give money, spend yourself with it.
Henry David Thoreau
Every gazette brings accounts of the untutored freaks of the wind,--shipwrecks and hurricanes which the mariner and planter acceptas special or general providences but they touch our consciences, they remind us of our sins. Another deluge would disgrace mankind.
Henry David Thoreau
As a man thinks of himself, so he is.
Henry David Thoreau
There is all the poetry in the world in a name. It is a poem which the mass of men hear and read. What is poetry in the common sense, but a hearing of such jingling names? I want nothing better than a good word. The name of a thing may easily be more than the thing itself to me.
Henry David Thoreau
To a small man every greater is an exaggeration.
Henry David Thoreau
When my legs begin to move, the thoughts begin to flow.
Henry David Thoreau
It takes a man of genius to travel in his own country, in his native village to make any progress between his door and his gate.
Henry David Thoreau
A sentence should be read as if its author, had he held a plough instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end.
Henry David Thoreau
Law never made men a whit more just.
Henry David Thoreau
Despair and postponement are cowardice and defeat. Men were born to succeed, not to fail.
Henry David Thoreau
The past is only so heroic as we see it. It is the canvas on which our idea of heroism is painted, and so, in one sense, the dim prospectus of our future field.
Henry David Thoreau
Be wary of technology it is often merely an improved means to an unimproved end.
Henry David Thoreau
Wherever a man separates from the multitude, and goes his own way in this mood, there indeed is a fork in the road, though ordinary travelers may see only a gap in the paling. His solitary path across lots will turn out the higher way of the two.
Henry David Thoreau
Keep up the fires of thought, and all will go well.
Henry David Thoreau
Comparatively, we can excuse any offense against the heart, but not against the imagination. The imagination knows--nothing escapes its glance from out its eyry--and it controls the breast.
Henry David Thoreau
When the reptile is attacked at one mouth of his burrow, he shows himself at another.
Henry David Thoreau
There is no just and serene criticism as yet.
Henry David Thoreau
