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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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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Things
Serious
Unimproved
Technology
Wont
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Distract
Literature
Inventions
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Improved
Means
Toys
Ends
Invention
Mean
Madness
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
How to extract its honey from the flower of the world. That is my everyday business. I am as busy as a bee about it. I ramble over fields on that errand and am never so happy as when I feel myself heavy with honey and wax. I am like a bee searching the livelong day for the sweets of nature.
Henry David Thoreau
The man who takes the liberty to live is superior to all the laws, by virtue of his relation to the lawmaker.
Henry David Thoreau
It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart it being much more sensitive.
Henry David Thoreau
True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.
Henry David Thoreau
How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.
Henry David Thoreau
You don't know your testament when you see it.
Henry David Thoreau
Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent.
Henry David Thoreau
It is remarkable that among all the preachers there are so few moral teachers. The prophets are employed in excusing the ways of men.
Henry David Thoreau
Friends will be much apart. They will respect more each other's privacy than their communion.
Henry David Thoreau
In what concerns you much, do not think that you have companions: know that you are alone in the world.
Henry David Thoreau
Nature confounds her summer distinctions at this season. The heavens seem to be nearer the earth. The elements are less reserved and distinct. Water turns to ice, rain to snow. The day is but a Scandinavian night. The winter is an arctic summer.
Henry David Thoreau
One is wise to cultivate the tree that bears fruit in our soul.
Henry David Thoreau
I think that Nature meant kindly when she made our brothers few. However, my voice is still for peace.
Henry David Thoreau
The inhabitants of earth behold commonly but the dark and shadowy under side of heaven's pavement it is only when seen at a favorable angle in the horizon, morning or evening, that some faint streaks of the rich lining of the clouds are revealed.
Henry David Thoreau
There is all the poetry in the world in a name. It is a poem which the mass of men hear and read. What is poetry in the common sense, but a hearing of such jingling names? I want nothing better than a good word. The name of a thing may easily be more than the thing itself to me.
Henry David Thoreau
The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?
Henry David Thoreau
We do not enjoy poetry unless we know it to be poetry.
Henry David Thoreau
A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.
Henry David Thoreau
To watch this crystal globe just sent from heaven to associate with me. While these clouds and this somber drizzling weather shut all in, we two draw nearer and know one another.
Henry David Thoreau
It is what a man thinks of himself that really determines his fate.
Henry David Thoreau
