Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau

Writer, Philosopher

Henry David Thoreau was an American author and philosopher known for his work 'Walden' and his advocacy for naturalism and civil disobedience.

Men Nature Life Thinking Book Inspirational
Born
July 12, 1817
Died
May 6, 1862
Quotes
2.8K
Rank
#46

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Henry David Thoreau quotes (page 30 of 139)

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"Be assured that every man's success is in proportion to his average ability. The meadow flowers spring and bloom where the watersannually deposit their slime, not where they reach in some freshet only. A man is not his hope, nor his despair, nor yet his past deed. We know not yet what we have done, still less what we are doing. Wait till evening, and other parts of our day's work will shine than we had thought at noon, and we shall discover the real purport of our toil. As when the farmer has reached the end of the furrow and looks back, he can tell best where the pressed earth shines most."

Success Patience Spring
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"The lover wants no partiality. He says, Be so kind as to be just."

Justice Want Lovers
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"There are none happy in the world but beings who enjoy freely a vast horizon."

Horizon World Enjoy
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"Where there is an observatory and a telescope, we expect that any eyes will see new worlds at once."

New Relationship Eye Perspective
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"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."

Lying Rain Lakes
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"Some do not walk at all; others walk in the highways; a few walk across lots."

Journey Hiking Walking Home
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"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."

Ocean Garden Sea
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"In the winter, warmth stands for all virtue."

Winter Virtue Warmth
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"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."

Thinking Doubt May
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"October is the month for painted leaves. Their rich glow now flashes round the world. As fruits and leaves and the day itself acquire a bright tint just before they fall, so the year near its setting. October is its sunset sky; November the later twilight."

Fall Twilight Sunset
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"Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house."

Life Love You House
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"The life of a good man will hardly improve us more than the life of a freebooter, for the inevitable laws appear as plainly in theinfringement as in the observance, and our lives are sustained by a nearly equal expense of virtue of some kind. The decaying tree, while yet it lives, demands sun, wind, and rain no less than the green one. It secretes sap and performs the functions of health. If we choose, we may study the alburnum only. The gnarled stump has as tender a bud as the sapling."

Rain Men Wind
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"Heroes are often the most ordinary of men."

Hero Men Ordinary
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"In the production of the necessaries of life Nature is ready enough to assist man."

Life Nature Men
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"An ordinary man will work every day for a year at shoveling dirt to support his body, or a family of bodies; but he is an extraordinary man who will work a whole day in a year for the support of his soul. Even the priests, men of God, so called, for the most part confess that they work for the support of the body."

Men Years Support
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"I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that 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. . . . In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness."

Inspirational Dream Live Life
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