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If labor mainly, or to any considerable degree, serves the purpose of a police, to keep men out of mischief, it indicates a rottenness at the foundation of our community.
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
Men
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Labor
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Mainly
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More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry.
Henry David Thoreau
I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself.
Henry David Thoreau
The fishermen say that the thundering of the pond scares the fishes and prevents their biting.
Henry David Thoreau
Men talk about Bible miracles because there is no miracle in their lives. Cease to gnaw that crust. There is ripe fruit over your head.
Henry David Thoreau
History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning ofthings, which natural history might with reason assume to do but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,--when did burdock and plantain sprout first?
Henry David Thoreau
Surely one may as profitably be soaked in the juices of a swamp for one day as pick his way dry-shod over sand. Cold and damp ? are they not as rich experience as warmth and dryness?
Henry David Thoreau
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
I am struck by the fact that the more slowly trees grow at first, the sounder they are at the core, and I think that the same is true of human beings.
Henry David Thoreau
You must converse much with the field and the woods if you would imbibe such health into your mind and spirit as you covet for your body
Henry David Thoreau
Where there is not discernment, the behavior even of the purest soul may in effect amount to coarseness.
Henry David Thoreau
What we call wildness is a civilization other than our own.
Henry David Thoreau
I do not judge men by anything they can do. Their greatest deed is the impression they make on me.
Henry David Thoreau
Many a forenoon have I stolen away, preferring to spend thus the most valued part of the day for I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days, and spent them lavishly nor do I regret that I did not waste more of them in the workshop or the teacher's desk.
Henry David Thoreau
A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.
Henry David Thoreau
No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof.
Henry David Thoreau
There are continents and seas in the moral world, to which every man is an isthmus or inlet, yet unexplored by him.
Henry David Thoreau
To say that God has given a man many and great talents frequently means that he has brought his heavens down within reach of his hands.
Henry David Thoreau
There is always room and occasion enough for a true book on any subject as there is room for more light the brightest day and more rays will not interfere with the first.
Henry David Thoreau
I wished only to be set down in Canada, and take one honest walk there as I might in Concord woods of an afternoon.
Henry David Thoreau
The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let us spend our lives in conceiving then. The poet or the artist never yet had so fair and noble a design but some of his posterity at least could accomplish it.
Henry David Thoreau
