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Henry David Thoreau Quotations

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Henry David Thoreau
1817-1862 (Age at death: 45 approx.)

Henry David Thoreau (see name pronunciation; July 12, 1817 - May 6, 1862) was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, and historian. A leading transcendentalist, Thoreau is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay Resistance to Civil Government (also known as Civil Disobedience), an argument for disobedience to an unjust state.

Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry total over 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions are his writings on natural history and philosophy, where he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern-day environmentalism. His literary style interweaves close natural observation, personal experience, pointed rhetoric, symbolic meanings, and historical lore, while displaying a poetic sensibility, philosophical austerity, and "Yankee" love of practical detail. He was also deeply interested in the idea of survival in the face of hostile elements, historical change, and natural decay; at the same time he advocated abandoning waste and illusion in order to discover life's true essential needs.

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54 Quotation(s) Total:

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I would give all the wealth of the world, and all the deeds of all the heroes, for one true vision.

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Henry David Thoreau

If labor mainly, or to any considerable degree, serves the purpose of a police, to keep men out of mischief, it indicates a rottenness at the foundation of our community.

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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 a success unexpected in common hours.

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Henry David Thoreau

If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal -- that is your success. All nature is your congratulation . . .

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Henry David Thoreau

In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high.

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Henry David Thoreau

It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?

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Henry David Thoreau

It is rare that we use our thinking faculty as resolutely as an irishman his spade. To please our friends and relatives we turn out our silver ore in cartloads, while we neglect to work our mines of gold known only to ourselves far up in the Sierras, where we pulled up a bush in our mountain walk, and saw the glittering treasure. Let us return thither. Let it be the price of our freedom to make that known.

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Henry David Thoreau

It is the marriage of the soul with Nature that makes the intellect fruitful, and gives birth to imagination.

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Henry David Thoreau

Knowledge does not come to us in details, but in flashes of light from heaven.

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Henry David Thoreau

Let nothing come between you and the light.

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Henry David Thoreau

Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.

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Henry David Thoreau

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.

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Henry David Thoreau

Men are born to succeed, not to fail.

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Henry David Thoreau

Men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.

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Henry David Thoreau

Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them.

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Henry David Thoreau

Music is perpetual, and only the hearing is intermittent.

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Henry David Thoreau

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.

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Henry David Thoreau

Our truest life is when we are in our dreams awake.

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Henry David Thoreau

Simplify, simplify.
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Henry David Thoreau

The art of life, of a poetÂ’s life, is, not having anything to do, to do something.

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Henry David Thoreau

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