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I have no designs on society, or nature, or God. I am simply what I am, or I begin to be that. I live in the present. I only remember the past, and anticipate the future. I love to live.
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
Nature
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Anticipate
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More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
The Great Snow! How cheerful it is to hear of!
Henry David Thoreau
There is not one kind of food for all men. You must and you will feed those faculties which you exercise. The laborer whose body is weary does not require the same food with the scholar whose brain is weary.
Henry David Thoreau
They take great pride in making their dinner cost much I take my pride in making my dinner cost so little.
Henry David Thoreau
All questions rely on the present for their solution. Time measures nothing but itself. The word that is written may be postponed,but not that on the lip. If this is what the occasion says, let the occasion say it.
Henry David Thoreau
It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.
Henry David Thoreau
The journalists think that they cannot say too much in favor of such improvements in husbandry it is a safe theme, like pietybut as for the beauty of one of these model farms, I would as lief see a patent churn and a man turning it. They are, commonly, places merely where somebody is making money, it may be counterfeiting.
Henry David Thoreau
Every man will be a poet if he can otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the poet.
Henry David Thoreau
God reigns when we take a liberal view, when a liberal view is presented to us.
Henry David Thoreau
One revelation has been made to the Indian, another to the white man.
Henry David Thoreau
The poet will write for his peers alone. He will remember only that he saw truth and beauty from his position, and expect the time when a vision as broad shall overlook the same field as freely.
Henry David Thoreau
Talk about slavery! It is not the peculiar institution of the South. It exists wherever men are bought and sold, wherever a man allows himself to be made a mere thing or a tool, and surrenders his inalienable rights of reason and conscience. Indeed, this slavery is more complete than that which enslaves the body alone.
Henry David Thoreau
A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.
Henry David Thoreau
The walls that fence our fields, as well as modern Rome, and not less the Parthenon itself, are all built of ruins.
Henry David Thoreau
No doubt another may also think for me but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself.
Henry David Thoreau
There are various, nay, incredible faiths why should we be alarmed at any of them? What man believes, God believes.
Henry David Thoreau
The ocean is a wilderness reaching round the globe, wilder than a Bengal jungle, and fuller of monsters, washing the very wharves of our cities and the gardens of our sea-side residences.
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
It [is of] some advantage to live a primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization, if only to learn what are the gross necessities of life.
Henry David Thoreau
The improved means to the unimproved end.
Henry David Thoreau
It must be confessed that horses at present work too exclusively for men, rarely men for horses and the brute degenerates in man's society.
Henry David Thoreau