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The mason asks but a narrow shelf to spring his brick from man requires only an infinitely narrower one to spring his arch of faith from.
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
Spring
Arches
Asks
Shelf
Faith
Brick
Men
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Narrower
Infinitely
Mason
Narrow
Arch
Requires
Masons
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
Unless we do more than simply learn the trade of our time, we are but apprentices, and not yet masters of the art of life.
Henry David Thoreau
As I came home through the woods with my string of fish, trailing my pole, it being now quite dark, I caught a glimpse of a woodchuck stealing across my path, and felt a strange thrill of savage delight, and was strongly tempted to seize and devour him raw not that I was hungry then, except for that wildness which he represented.
Henry David Thoreau
It is not for a man to put himself in such an attitude to society, but to maintain himself in whatever attitude he find himself through obedience to the laws of his being, which will never be one of opposition to a just government, if he should chance to meet with such.
Henry David Thoreau
Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God's property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.
Henry David Thoreau
The same law that shapes the earth-star shapes the snow-star. As surely as the petals of a flower are fixed, each of these countless snow-stars comes whirling to earth...these glorious spangles, the sweeping of heaven's floor.
Henry David Thoreau
Most men, it seems to me, do not care for Nature and would sell their share in all her beauty, as long as they may live, for a stated sum - many for a glass of rum. Thank God, men cannot as yet fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth!
Henry David Thoreau
Your religion is where your love is.
Henry David Thoreau
The only way to speak the truth is to speak lovingly.
Henry David Thoreau
Every man who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best condition, has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food
Henry David Thoreau
Whatever beauty we behold, the more it is distant, serene, and cold, the purer and more durable it is. It is better to warm ourselves with ice than with fire.
Henry David Thoreau
Life isn't about finding yourself it's about creating yourself. So live the life you imagined.
Henry David Thoreau
I love you not as something private and personal, which is my own, but as something universal and worthy of love which I have found.
Henry David Thoreau
I say, break the law.
Henry David Thoreau
The state does not demand justice of its members, but thinks that it succeeds very well with the least degree of it, hardly more than rogues practice and so do the neighborhood and the family. What is commonly called Friendship even is only a little more honor among rogues.
Henry David Thoreau
No people ever lived by cursing their fathers, however great a curse their fathers might have been to them.
Henry David Thoreau
For the most part, we are not where we are, but in a false position. Through an infirmity of our natures, we suppose a case, and put ourselves into it, and hence are in two cases at the same time, and it is doubly difficult to get out.
Henry David Thoreau
I see less difference between a city and a swamp than formerly.
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
Nature is full of genius, full of divinity.
Henry David Thoreau
What means the fact--which is so common, so universal--that some soul that has lost all hope for itself can inspire in another listening soul an infinite confidence in it, even while it is expressing its despair?
Henry David Thoreau