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Sincerity is a great but rare virtue, and we pardon to it much complaining, and the betrayal of many weaknesses.
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
Rare
Complaining
Weakness
Virtue
Many
Pardon
Great
Weaknesses
Much
Betrayal
Sincerity
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
Like speaks to like only labor to labor, philosophy to philosophy, criticism to criticism, poetry to poetry. Literature speaks how much still to the past, how little to the future, how much to the East, how little to the West.
Henry David Thoreau
When I meet a government which says to me, Your money or your life, why should I be in haste to give it my money?
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Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every shrub and tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit.
Henry David Thoreau
He who cuts down woods beyond a certain limit exterminates birds.
Henry David Thoreau
I have a room all to myself it is nature.
Henry David Thoreau
In the religion of all nations a purity is hinted at, which, I fear, men never attain to.
Henry David Thoreau
Fire is the most tolerable third party
Henry David Thoreau
If it is the result of a pure love, there can be nothing sensual in marriage. Chastity is something positive, not negative. It isthe virtue of the married especially. All lusts or base pleasures must give place to loftier delights. They who meet as superior beings cannot perform the deeds of inferior ones.
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. . . we should be men first, and subjects afterward.
Henry David Thoreau
After all, I believe it is the style of thought entirely, and the style of expression, which makes the difference in books.
Henry David Thoreau
The tree of Knowledge is a Tree of Knowledge of good and evil.
Henry David Thoreau
Though my life is low, if my spirit looks upward habitually at an elevated angle, it is as if it were redeemed. When the desire to be better than we are is really sincere we are instantly elevated, and so far better already.
Henry David Thoreau
Be not anxious to avoid poverty. In this way the wealth of the universe may be securely invested.
Henry David Thoreau
Yet, for my part, I was never unusually squeamish I could sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish, if it were necessary.
Henry David Thoreau
When my legs begin to move, the thoughts begin to flow.
Henry David Thoreau
We often love to think now of the life of men on beaches,--at least in midsummer, when the weather is serene their sunny lives onthe sand, amid the beach-grass and bayberries, their companion a cow, their wealth a jag of driftwood or a few beach plums, and their music the surf and the peep of the beech-bird.
Henry David Thoreau
When the reptile is attacked at one mouth of his burrow, he shows himself at another.
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
. . . I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days. . . .
Henry David Thoreau
All men recognize the right of revolution that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable.
Henry David Thoreau
