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Henry David Thoreau

Read through the most famous quotes from Henry David Thoreau




Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. what a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.


— Henry David Thoreau


#inspirational

Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams.


— Henry David Thoreau


#another #cherish #dreams #friends #hopes

What sort of philosophers are we, who know absolutely nothing of the origin and destiny of cats?


— Henry David Thoreau


#philosophy #destiny

Amid a world of noisy, shallow actors it is noble to stand aside and say, 'I will simply be.


— Henry David Thoreau


#noble

What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.


— Henry David Thoreau


#education #freedom #education

We are constantly invited to be who we are.


— Henry David Thoreau


#inspirational

Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.


— Henry David Thoreau


#truth #honesty

Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.


— Henry David Thoreau


#flying #god #men

Simplify, simplify.


— Henry David Thoreau


#life

I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.


— Henry David Thoreau


#life






About Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau Quotes




Did you know about Henry David Thoreau?

I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man; wine is not so noble a liquor. Of all ebriosity who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes?"


Social and political influence

Thoreau's political writings had little impact during his lifetime as "his contemporaries did not see him as a theorist or as a radical viewing him instead as a naturalist. A legend proposes that Thoreau refused to pay the five-dollar fee for a Harvard diploma.

Thoreau's books articles essays journals and poetry total over 20 volumes. 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 is best known for his book Walden a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings and his essay Civil Disobedience an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.

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