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Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end.
Henry David Thoreau
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Henry David Thoreau
Age: 44 †
Born: 1817
Born: July 12
Died: 1862
Died: May 6
Abolitionist
Author
Autobiographer
Diarist
Ecologist
Environmentalist
Essayist
Naturalist
Philosopher
Poet
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Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
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Toys
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Invention
Mean
Madness
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Serious
Unimproved
Technology
Wont
Pretty
Distract
Literature
Inventions
Attention
Improved
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
To the virtuous man, the universe is the only sanctum sanctorum, and the penetralia of the temple are the broad noon of his existence.
Henry David Thoreau
The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?
Henry David Thoreau
It seems as if the more youthful and impressible streams can hardly resist the numerous invitations and temptations to leave theirnative beds and run down their neighbors' channels.
Henry David Thoreau
When I consider how, after sunset, the stars come out gradually in troops from behind the hills and woods, I confess that I could not have contrived a more curious and inspiring sight.
Henry David Thoreau
What is called common sense is excellent in its department, and as invaluable as the virtue of conformity in the army and navy,--for there must be subordination,--but uncommon sense, that sense which is common only to the wisest, is as much more excellent as it is more rare.
Henry David Thoreau
It is a momentous fact that a man may be good, or he may be bad his life may be true, or it may be false it may be either a shame or a glory to him. The good man builds himself up the bad man destroys himself.
Henry David Thoreau
We can never have enough of Nature.
Henry David Thoreau
Commonly men will only be brave as their fathers were brave, or timid.
Henry David Thoreau
There is in my nature, methinks, a singular yearning toward all wildness.
Henry David Thoreau
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.
Henry David Thoreau
No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof.
Henry David Thoreau
Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, seewhat isbefore you, and walkon intofuturity.
Henry David Thoreau
The murmurs of many a famous river on the other side of the globe reach even to us here, as to more distant dwellers on its banksmany a poet's stream, floating the helms and shields of heroes on its bosom.
Henry David Thoreau
There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages.
Henry David Thoreau
There are none happy in the world but beings who enjoy freely a vast horizon.
Henry David Thoreau
You must get your living by loving. But as it is said of the merchants that ninety-seven in a hundred fail, so the life of men generally, tried by this standard, is a failure, and bankruptcy may be surely prophesied.
Henry David Thoreau
Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.
Henry David Thoreau
Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.
Henry David Thoreau
It is pleasant to have been to a place the way a river went.
Henry David Thoreau
It is no more dusky in ordinary nights than our mind's habitual atmosphere, and the moonlight is as bright as our most illuminatedmoments are.
Henry David Thoreau
