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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
Requires
Masons
Spring
Arches
Asks
Shelf
Faith
Brick
Men
Bricks
Shelves
Narrower
Infinitely
Mason
Narrow
Arch

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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At present the globe goes with a shattered constitution in its orbit.... No doubt the simple powers of nature, properly directed by man, would make it healthy and a paradise as the laws of man's own constitution but wait to be obeyed, to restore him to health and happiness.
Henry David Thoreau
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As for your high towers and monuments, there was a crazy fellow once in this town who undertook to dig through to China, and he got so far that, as he said, he heard the Chinese pots and kettles rattle but I think that I shall not go out of my way to admire the hole which he made.
Henry David Thoreau
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From my experience with wild apples, I can understand that there may be reason for a savage's preferring many kinds of food which the civilized man rejects. The former has the palate of an outdoor man. It takes a savage or wild taste to appreciate a wild fruit.
Henry David Thoreau
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Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. She exists for no other end. Do not resist. With the least inclination to be well, we should not be sick.
Henry David Thoreau
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Great God, I ask thee for no meaner pelf Than that I may not disappoint myself, That in my action I may soar as high As I can now discern with this clear eye.
Henry David Thoreau
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We cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun he is no more humane, while his education has been sadly neglected.
Henry David Thoreau
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I fear that he who walks over these fields a century hence will not know the pleasure of knocking off wild apples. Ah, poor man, there are many pleasures which he will not know!
Henry David Thoreau
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I do not believe there are eight hundred human beings on the globe.
Henry David Thoreau
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My desire for knowledge is intermittent but my desire to commune with the spirit of the universe, to be intoxicated with the fumes, call it, of that divine nectar, to bear my head through atmospheres and over heights unknown to my feet, is perennial and constant.
Henry David Thoreau
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Invariably our best nights were those when it rained.
Henry David Thoreau
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Dissent without action is consent.
Henry David Thoreau
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We must have infinite faith in each other.
Henry David Thoreau
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I walk out into a nature such as the old prophets and poets Menu, Moses, Homer, Chaucer, walked in. You may name it America, but it is not America. Neither Americus Vespucius, nor Columbus, nor the rest were the discoverers of it. There is a truer account of it in Mythology than in any history of America so called that I have seen.
Henry David Thoreau
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Men have become the tools of their tools.
Henry David Thoreau
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If misery loves company, misery has company enough.
Henry David Thoreau
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We discover a new world every time we see the earth again after it has been covered for a season with snow.
Henry David Thoreau
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We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake.
Henry David Thoreau
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Nature refuses to sympathize with our sorrow. She seems not to have provided for, but by a thousand contrivances against it.
Henry David Thoreau
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If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
Henry David Thoreau
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I make myself rich by making my wants few.
Henry David Thoreau