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The condition-of-England question is a practical one. The condition of England demands a hero, not a poet.
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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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
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More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
The question is not what you look at – but how you look & whether you see.
Henry David Thoreau
No definition of poetry is adequate unless it be poetry itself. The most accurate analysis by the rarest wisdom is yet insufficient, and the poet will instantly prove it false by setting aside its requisitions. It is indeed all that we do not know.
Henry David Thoreau
The sport of digging the bait is nearly equal to that of catching the fish, when one's appetite is not too keen.
Henry David Thoreau
Our own country furnishes antiquities as ancient and durable, and as useful, as any rocks at least as well covered with lichens,and a soil which, if it is virgin, is but virgin mould, the very dust of nature. What if we cannot read Rome or Greece, Etruria or Carthage, or Egypt or Babylon, on these are our cliffs bare?
Henry David Thoreau
Good for the body is the work of the body, good for the soul the work of the soul, and good for either the work of the other.
Henry David Thoreau
All that man has to say or do that can possibly concern mankind is in some shape or other to tell the story of his love-to sing, and, if he is fortunate and keeps alive, he will be forever in love.
Henry David Thoreau
It is dry, hazy June weather. We are more of the earth, farther from heaven these days.
Henry David Thoreau
In the love of narrow souls I make many short voyages but in vain-I find no sea room-but in great souls I sail before the wind without a watch, and never reach the shore.
Henry David Thoreau
If you are chosen town clerk, forsooth, you cannot go to Tierra del Fuego this summer but you may go to the land of infernal fire nevertheless.
Henry David Thoreau
Don't be afraid that your life will end, be afraid that it will never begin!
Henry David Thoreau
The Oriental philosophy approaches easily loftier themes than the modern aspires to and no wonder if it sometimes prattle about them. It only assigns their due rank respectively to Action and Contemplation, or rather does full justice to the latter. Western philosophers have not conceived of the significance of Contemplation in their sense.
Henry David Thoreau
Many, no doubt, are well disposed, but sluggish by constitution and habit, and they cannot conceive of a man who is actuated by higher motives than they are. Accordingly they pronounce this man insane, for they know that they could never act as he does, as long as they are themselves.
Henry David Thoreau
This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments?
Henry David Thoreau
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
The truth is, there is money buried everywhere, and you have only to go to work to find it.
Henry David Thoreau
You speak of poverty and dependence. Who are poor and dependent? Who are rich and independent? When was it that men agreed to respect the appearance and not the reality?
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
Waves of a serene life pass over us from time to time, like flakes of sunlight over the fields in cloudy weather.
Henry David Thoreau
Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds.
Henry David Thoreau
There is a slumbering subterranean fire in nature which never goes out, and which no cold can chill.
Henry David Thoreau
