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.

Born
July 12, 1817
Died
May 6, 1862
Quotes
2.8K
Rank
#46

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Henry David Thoreau quotes (page 89 of 139)

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"The cheapest way to travel, and the way to travel the farthest in the shortest distance, is to go afoot, carrying a dipper, a spoon, and a fish line, some Indian meal, some salt, and some sugar.... Any one of these things I mean, not all together. I have traveled thus some hundreds of miles without taking any meal in a house, sleeping on the ground when convenient, and found it cheaper, and in many respects more profitable, than staying at home. So that some have inquired why it would not be best to travel always. But I never thought of traveling simply as a means of getting a livelihood."

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"What wisdom, what warning can prevail against gladness? There is no law so strong that a little gladness may not transgress."

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"The mason asks but a narrow shelf to spring his brick from; man requires only an infinitely narrower one to spring his arch of faith from."

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"Education makes a straight ditch of a free meandering brook."

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"But man's capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little have been tried."

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"The church is a sort of hospital for men's souls and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies."

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"I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both. I love the wild not less than the good."

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"I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one."

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"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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"Begin where you are and such as you are, without aiming mainly to become of more worth, and with kindness aforethought, go about doing good."

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"I do not know how to distinguish between waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?"

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"The repugnance to animal food is not the effect of experience, but is an instinct. It appeared more beautiful to live low and farehard in many respects; and though I never did so, I went far enough to please my imagination."

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"All nations love the same jests and tales, Jews, Christians, and Mahometans, and the same translated suffice for all."

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"A stranger may easily detect what is strange to the oldest inhabitant, for the strange is his province."

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"I fear that he who walks over these fields a century hence will not know the pleasure of knocking off wild apples. Ah, poor man, there are many pleasures which he will not know!"

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"I would remind my countrymen, that they are to be men first, and Americans only at a late and convenient hour. No matter how valuable law may be to protect your property, even to keep soul and body together, if it do not keep you and humanity together."

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"The chief want, in every state that I have been into, was a high and earnest purpose in its inhabitants."

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"There is always room and occasion enough for a true book on any subject; as there is room for more light the brightest day and more rays will not interfere with the first."

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