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There are theoretical reformers at all times, and all the world over, living on anticipation.
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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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
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More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
The student who secures his coveted leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisure fruitful.
Henry David Thoreau
Be wary of technology it is often merely an improved means to an unimproved end.
Henry David Thoreau
The Indian navigator naturally distinguishes by a name those parts of a stream where he has encountered quick water and forks, andagain, the lakes and smooth water where he can rest his weary arms, since those are the most interesting and more arable parts to him.
Henry David Thoreau
A man is wise with the wisdom of his time only, and ignorant with its ignorance.
Henry David Thoreau
There is absolutely no common sense, it is common non-sense.
Henry David Thoreau
I do not value any view of the universe into which man and the institutions of man enter very largely and absorb much of the attention. Man is but the place where I stand, and the prospect hence is infinite.
Henry David Thoreau
If we were left solely to the wordy wit of legislators in Congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonal experience and the effectual complaints of the people, America would not long retain her rank among the nations.
Henry David Thoreau
A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book.
Henry David Thoreau
The law will never make a man free it is men who have got to make the law free.
Henry David Thoreau
Improve every opportunity to be melancholy.
Henry David Thoreau
Man makes very much such a nest for his domestic animals, of withered grass and fodder, as the squirrels and many other wild creatures do for themselves.
Henry David Thoreau
I am not afraid of praise, for I have practiced it on myself.
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
Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.
Henry David Thoreau
Talk of mysteries! — Think of our life in nature, — daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it, — rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! The actual world! The common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? Where are we?
Henry David Thoreau
Literary gentlemen, editors, and critics think that they know how to write, because they have studied grammar and rhetoric but they are egregiously mistaken. The art of composition is as simple as the discharge of a bullet from a rifle, and its masterpieces imply an infinitely greater force behind them.
Henry David Thoreau
The faultfinder will find faults even in paradise.
Henry David Thoreau
I was more independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment.
Henry David Thoreau
If there were one who lived wholly without the use of money, the State itself would hesitate to demand it of him. But the rich man--not to make any invidious comparison--is always sold to the institution which makes him rich.... Thus his moral ground is taken from under his feet.
Henry David Thoreau
Let go of the past and live the future . . . Live the life you imagined.
Henry David Thoreau
