Quote

It is but too easy to establish another durable and harmonious routine. Immediately all parts of nature consent to it. Only make something to take the place of something, and men will behave as if it was the very thing they wanted.

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
Diarist
Ecologist
Environmentalist
Essayist
Naturalist
Philosopher
Poet
Translator
Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Nature
Conformity
Place
Routine
Wanted
Immediately
Take
Behave
Thing
Parts
Durable
Something
Habit
Harmonious
Make
Easy
Consent
Men
Another
Establish

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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I never yet knew the sun to be knocked down and rolled through a mud-puddle he comes out honor-bright from behind every storm. Let us then take sides with the sun, seeing we have so much leisure.
Henry David Thoreau
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A strange age of the world this, when empires, kingdoms, and republics come a-begging to a private man's door, and utter their complaints at his elbow! I cannot take up a newspaper but I find that some wretched government or other, hard pushed and on its last legs, is interceding with me, the reader, to vote for it.
Henry David Thoreau
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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
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There is a chasm between knowledge and ignorance which the arches of science can never span.
Henry David Thoreau
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I never dreamed of any enormity greater than I have committed. I never knew, and never shall know, a worse man than myself.
Henry David Thoreau
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To the man who cherishes a secret in his breast, there is a still greater secret unexplored. Our most indifferent acts may be a matter for secrecy, but whatever we do with the utmost truthfulness and integrity, by virtue of its pureness, must be transparent as light.
Henry David Thoreau
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As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.
Henry David Thoreau
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Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.
Henry David Thoreau
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Do not entertain doubts if they are not agreeable to you.
Henry David Thoreau
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Heal yourselves, doctors by God I live.
Henry David Thoreau
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You only need sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns.
Henry David Thoreau
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Truth never turns to rebuke falsehood her own straightforwardness is the severest correction.
Henry David Thoreau
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The only people who ever get anyplace interesting are the people who get lost.
Henry David Thoreau
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The kind uncles and aunts of the race are more esteemed than its true spiritual fathers and mothers.
Henry David Thoreau
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O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it, for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment.
Henry David Thoreau
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No man's thoughts are new, but the style of their expression is the never-failing novelty which cheers and refreshes men. If we were to answer the question, whether the mass of men, as we know them, talk as the standard authors and reviewers write, or rather as this man writes, we should say that he alone begins to write their language at all.
Henry David Thoreau
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We hear and apprehend only what we already half know.
Henry David Thoreau
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The authority of government . . . can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it.
Henry David Thoreau
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I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.
Henry David Thoreau
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Why does it [government] always crucify Christ, and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?
Henry David Thoreau