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There is no just and serene criticism as yet.

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
Translator
Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Serene
Criticism
Quiet
Literature

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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I do not value any view of the universe into which man and the institutions of man enter very largely and absorb much of the attention. Man is but the place where I stand, and the prospect hence is infinite.
Henry David Thoreau
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Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows.
Henry David Thoreau
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Homeliness is almost as great a merit in a book as in a house, if the reader would abide there. It is next to beauty, and a very high art.
Henry David Thoreau
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Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.
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To meet the objections of some inveterate cavillers, I may as well state, that if I dined out occasionally, as I always had done,and I trust shall have opportunities to do again, it was frequently to the detriment of my domestic arrangements.
Henry David Thoreau
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Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towardsrecognizing and organizing the rights of man?
Henry David Thoreau
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We make needless ado about capital punishment,--taking lives, when there is no life to take.
Henry David Thoreau
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Friends will be much apart. They will respect more each other's privacy than their communion.
Henry David Thoreau
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Who hears the fishes when they cry?
Henry David Thoreau
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Can we not do without the society of our gossip a little while, - have our own thoughts to cheer us?
Henry David Thoreau
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The knowledge of an unlearned man is living and luxuriant like a forest, but covered with mosses and lichens and for the most part inaccessible and going to waste the knowledge of the man of science is like timber collected in yards for public works, which still supports a green sprout here and there, but even this is liable to dry rot.
Henry David Thoreau
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Why look in the dark for light?
Henry David Thoreau
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I live in the angle of a leaden wall, into whose composition was poured a little alloy of bell-metal. Often, in the repose of my mid-day, there reaches my ears a confused tintinnabulum from without. It is the noise of my contemporaries.
Henry David Thoreau
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The condition-of-England question is a practical one. The condition of England demands a hero, not a poet.
Henry David Thoreau
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When a shadow flits across the landscape of the soul where is the substance?
Henry David Thoreau
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The faultfinder will find faults even in paradise.
Henry David Thoreau
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Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity is open.
Henry David Thoreau
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When any real progress is made, we unlearned and learn anew what we thought we knew before.
Henry David Thoreau
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You must get your living by loving, or at least half your life is a failure.
Henry David Thoreau
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I do not know but it is too much to read one newspaper a week. I have tried it recently, and for so long it seems to me that I have not dwelt in my native region. The sun, the clouds, the snow, the trees say not so much to me. You cannot serve two masters.
Henry David Thoreau