Quotes by Henry David Thoreau
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
So our human life but dies down to its root, and still puts forth its green blade to eternity.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
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Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must lay it down and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading I must finish by acting.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
Me thinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
Good for the body is the work of the body, and good for the soul is the work of the soul, and good for either is the work of the other.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
Dreams are the touchstones of our character.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support. If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
The lakes are something which you are unprepared for; they lie up so high, exposed to the light, and the forest is diminished to a fine fringe on their edges, with here and there a blue mountain, like amethyst jewels set around some jewel of the first water, - so anterior, so superior, to all the changes that are to take place on their shores, even now civil and refined, and fair as they can ever be.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates his fate.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
Heaven is under our feet, as well as over our heads.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
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Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
When a dog runs at you, whistle for him.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
A kitten is so flexible that she is almost double; the hind parts are equivalent to another kitten with which the forepart plays. She does not discover that her tail belongs to her until you tread on it.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
One cannot too soon forget his errors and misdemeanors; for to dwell upon them is to add to the offense.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
To a small man every greater is an exaggeration.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
But the place which you have selected for your camp, though never so rough and grim, begins at once to have its attractions, and becomes a very centre of civilization to you: "Home is home, be it never so homely."
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
Law never made men a whit more just.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
By avarice and selfishness, and a groveling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a robber.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institution - such call I good books.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
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.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
Do not despair of life. Think of the fox, prowling in a winter night to satisfy his hunger. His race survives I do not believe any of them ever committed suicide.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
The bluebird carries the sky on his back.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
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.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
I think we may safely trust a good deal more than we do.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
It is never too late to give up our prejudices.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
We seem but to linger in manhood to tell the dreams of our childhood, and they vanish out of memory ere we learn the language.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
"Hear! hear!" screamed the jay from a neighboring tree, where I had heard a tittering for some time, "winter has a concentrated and nutty kernel, if you know where to look for it."
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
The hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
Only that day dawns to which we are awake.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
I have lived some thirty-odd years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not so desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
We are double-edged blades, and every time we whet our virtue the return stroke strops our vice.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
I believe that men are generally still a little afraid of the dark, though the witches are all hung, and Christianity and candles have been introduced.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
The fire is the main comfort of the camp, whether in summer or winter, and is about as ample at one season as at another. It is as well for cheerfulness as for warmth and dryness.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
Lo! Men have become the tools of their tools.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
Fire is the most tolerable third party.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
The sun is but a morning star.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
It often happens that a man is more humanely related to a cat or dog than to any human being.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
Things do not change; we change.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
We should distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
One farmer says to me, "You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make the bones with;" and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying himself with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
If... the machine of government... is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
Every man is the builder of a Temple called his body, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
When you knock, ask to see God - none of the servants.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
Not only must we be good, but we must also be good for something.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
A gun gives you the body, not the bird.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.
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Henry David Thoreau Quotes