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Quotes from Henry David Thoreau

Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.
~ Henry David Thoreau
I had a classmate who fitted for college by the lamps of a lighthouse, which was more light, we think, than the University afforded.
~ Henry David Thoreau
My eye is educated to discover anything on the ground, as chestnuts, etc. It is probably wholesomer to look at the ground much than at the heavens.
~ Henry David Thoreau
When the State wishes to endow an academy or university, it grants it a tract of forest land: one saw represents an academy, a gang, a university.
~ Henry David Thoreau
Education makes a straight ditch of a free meandering brook.
~ Henry David Thoreau
The schools begin with what they call the elements, and where do they end?
~ Henry David Thoreau
We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.
~ Henry David Thoreau
We can never have enough of Nature.
~ Henry David Thoreau
We need the tonic of wildness.
~ Henry David Thoreau
It is pleasant to have been to a place the way a river went.
~ Henry David Thoreau
What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.
~ Henry David Thoreau
In the unbending of the arm to do the deed there is experience worth all the maxims in the world.
~ Henry David Thoreau
Experience is in the fingers and the head. The heart is inexperienced.
~ Henry David Thoreau
Who could believe in the prophecies ... that the world would end this summer, while one milkweed with faith matured its seeds.
~ Henry David Thoreau
Give me the old familiar world, post-office and all, with this ever new self, with this infinite expectation and faith, which does not know when it is beaten.
~ Henry David Thoreau
We must have infinite faith in each other.
~ Henry David Thoreau
The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness.
~ Henry David Thoreau
It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?
~ Henry David Thoreau
Friends will not only live in harmony but in melody.
~ Henry David Thoreau
When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable.
~ Henry David Thoreau
I fear that I have not got much to say about Canada, not having seen much; what I got by going to Canada was a cold.
~ Henry David Thoreau
When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality.
~ Henry David Thoreau
People die of fright and live of confidence.
~ Henry David Thoreau
Nothing is so much to be feared as fear.
~ Henry David Thoreau