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 47 of 139)

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"f the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go; perchance it will wear smooth - certainly the machine will wear out... but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn."

Government Law Let It Go
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"The indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature-of sun and wind and rain, of summer and winter-such health, such cheer, they afford forever! and such sympathy have they ever with our race, that all Nature would be affected, and the sun's brightness fade, and the winds would sigh humanely, and the clouds rain tears, and the woods shed their leaves and put on mourning in midsummer, if any man should ever for a just cause grieve."

Summer Nature Cheer
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"Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downwards through the mud and slush of opinion and tradition, and pride and prejudice, appearance and delusion, through the alluvium which covers the globe, through poetry and philosophy and religion, through church and state, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, till we come to a hard bottom that rocks in place which we can call reality and say, "This is and no mistake."

New York Philosophy Mistake
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"I am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a bumblebee. I am no more lonely than the Mill Brook, or a weathercock, or the north star, or the south wind, or an April shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new house."

Lonely Horse Stars
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"Friendship is never established as an understood relation. It is a miracle which requires constant proofs. It is an exercise of the purest imagination and of the rarest faith!"

Friendship Exercise Imagination
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"The kindness I have longest remembered has been of this sort, the sort unsaid; so far behind the speaker's lips that almost it already lay in my heart. It did not have far to go to be communicated."

Inspirational Children Kindness
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"I turned my face more exclusively than ever to the woods, where I was better known."

Tree Woods Faces
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"Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now."

Wall Work Men
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"When I read some of the rules for speaking and writing the English language correctly, I think any fool can make a rule, and every fool will mind it."

Writing Thinking Mind
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"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?"

Stars Thinking Space
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"You know about a person who deeply interests you more than you can be told. A look, a gesture, an act, which to everybody else is insignificant tells you more about that one than words can."

Looks Gestures Interest
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"Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. She exists for no other end. Do not resist. With the least inclination to be well, we should not be sick."

Inspirational Motivational Suicide
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"Truth strikes us from behind and in the dark, as well as from before and in broad daylight."

Dark Daylight Broads
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"In literature it is only the wild that attracts us."

Literature
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"We are ever dying to one world and being born into another."

Death Dying World
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"What is religion? That which is never spoken."

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"Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence."

Paper Vote Influence
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"Wherever men have lived, there is a story to be told"

Men Stories
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"The fate of the country does not depend on how you vote at the polls - the worst man is as strong as the best at that game; it does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning."

Country Strong Morning
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