It is a good policy to be stirring about your affairs, for the reward of activity and energy is that if you do not accomplish the object you had prof… - Henry David Thoreau

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It is a good policy to be stirring about your affairs, for the reward of activity and energy is that if you do not accomplish the object you had professed to yourself, you do accomplish something else. So, in my botanizing or natural history walks, it commonly turns out that, going for one thing, I get another thing.

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About Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau (12 July 1817 – 6 May 1862) was an American essayist, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, and historian. A leading transcendentalist, Thoreau is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay Resistance to Civil Government (also known as Civil Disobedience), an argument for disobedience to an unjust state.

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Also Known As

Birth Name: David Henry Thoreau
Alternative Names: Thoreau Henry D. Thoreau Henry Thoreau

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Additional quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Men go to a fire for entertainment. When I see how eagerly men will run to a fire, whether in warm or in cold weather, by day or by night, dragging an engine at their heels, I'm astonished to perceive how good a purpose the level of excitement is made to serve.

Let me suggest a theme for you: to state to yourself precisely and completely what that walk over the mountains amounted to for you, —returning to this essay again and again, until you are satisfied that all that was important in your experience is in it.

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I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, to life itself, than this incessant business.

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