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For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it (life), whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to 'glorify God and enjoy him forever.'
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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Ecologist
Environmentalist
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
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More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
The condition-of-England question is a practical one. The condition of England demands a hero, not a poet.
Henry David Thoreau
I also have in mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters.
Henry David Thoreau
If ever I did a man any goodof course it was something exceptional and insignificant compared with the good or evil which I am constantly doing by being what I am.
Henry David Thoreau
Nothing more strikingly betrays the credulity of mankind than medicine. Quackery is a thing universal, and universally successful. In this case it becomes literally true that no imposition is too great for the credulity of men.
Henry David Thoreau
The man who does not betake himself at once and desperately to sawing is called a loafer, though he may be knocking at the doors of heaven all the while.
Henry David Thoreau
I find it, as ever, very unprofitable to have much to do with men. It is sowing the wind, but not reaping even the whirlwind onlyreaping an unprofitable calm and stagnation. Our conversation is a smooth, and civil, and never-ending speculation merely.
Henry David Thoreau
Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature -if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you -know that the morning and spring of your life are past. Thus may you feel your pulse.
Henry David Thoreau
I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life.
Henry David Thoreau
True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.
Henry David Thoreau
All men are really most attracted by the beauty of plain speech, and they even write in a florid style in imitation of this. Theyprefer to be misunderstood rather than to come short of its exuberance.
Henry David Thoreau
Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve.
Henry David Thoreau
I once found a kernel of corn in the middle of a deep wood by Walden, tucked in behind a lichen on a pine, about as high as my head, either by a crow or a squirrel. It was a mile at least from any corn-field.
Henry David Thoreau
Unlike the Concord, the Merrimack is not a dead but a living stream, though it has less life within its waters and on its banks. It has a swift current, and, in this part of its course, a clayey bottom, almost no weeds, and comparatively few fishes.
Henry David Thoreau
They who are continually shocked by slavery have some right to be shocked by the violent death of the slaveholder, but no others.Such will be more shocked by his life than by his death.
Henry David Thoreau
The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.
Henry David Thoreau
Let your condiments be in the condition of your senses.
Henry David Thoreau
Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them.
Henry David Thoreau
Man wanted a home, a place for warmth, or comfort, first of physical warmth, then the warmth of the affections.
Henry David Thoreau
To live a better life,--this surely can be done.
Henry David Thoreau
When we are in health, all sounds fife and drum for us we hear the notes of music in the air, or catch its echoes dying away when we awake in the dawn.
Henry David Thoreau
