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I begin to see an object when I cease to understand it.

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
Cease
Object
Begin
Objects
Vision
Seeing
Understand
Nature
Awe

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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You cannot hear music and noise at the same time.
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We are made happy when reason can discover no occasion for it. The memory of some past moments is more persuasive than the experience of present ones. There have been visions of such breadth and brightness that these motes were invisible in their light.
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I have a room all to myself it is nature.
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My facts shall be falsehoods to the common sense. I would so state facts that they shall be significant, shall be myths or mythologic. Facts which the mind perceived, thoughts which the body thought - with these I deal.
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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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Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.
Henry David Thoreau
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I learned from my two years' experience that it would cost incredibly little trouble to obtain one's necessary food that a man may use as simple a diet as the animals, and yet retain health and strength.
Henry David Thoreau
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The world is a strange place for a playhouse to stand within it.
Henry David Thoreau
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In the unbending of the arm to do the deed there is experience worth all the maxims in the world.
Henry David Thoreau
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The church is a sort of hospital for men's souls and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies.
Henry David Thoreau
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All that man has to say or do that can possibly concern mankind is in some shape or other to tell the story of his love-to sing, and, if he is fortunate and keeps alive, he will be forever in love.
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Surely one may as profitably be soaked in the juices of a swamp for one day as pick his way dry-shod over sand. Cold and damp ? are they not as rich experience as warmth and dryness?
Henry David Thoreau
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You must ascend a mountain to learn your relation to matter, and so to your own body, for it is at home there, though you are not.
Henry David Thoreau
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Nature has no human inhabitant who appreciates her.
Henry David Thoreau
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The only free road, the Underground Railroad, is owned and managed by the Vigilant Committee. They have tunneled under the whole breadth of the land.
Henry David Thoreau
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My life has been the poem I would have writ, But I could not both live and utter it.
Henry David Thoreau
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I am wont to think that men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men. The former are so much the freer.
Henry David Thoreau
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Pray, for what do we move ever but to get rid of our furniture, our exuviæ at last to go from this world to another newly furnished, and leave this to be burned?
Henry David Thoreau
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I do not know how to distinguish between waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?
Henry David Thoreau
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A person who chooses to die or to risk death demonstrates that there are values, principles, maxims, that are more valuable to him than is life itself. In short, he places his immortal self above his mortal self. Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.
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