Quote

The intellect of most men is barren. They neither fertilize or are fertilized. It is the marriage of the soul with nature that makes the intellect fruitful, that gives birth to imagination...without nature-awakened imagination most persons do not really live in the world, they merely pass through it as they live dull lives of quiet desperation.

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
Without
Gives
Intellect
Giving
Imagination
Pass
Fertilize
Really
Lives
Gratitude
Fertilized
Men
Makes
Merely
Fruitful
World
Nature
Neither
Barren
Persons
Birth
Desperation
Soul
Quiet
Awakened
Live
Marriage
Dull

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All sensuality is one, though it takes many forms all purity is one. It is the same whether a man eat, or drink, or cohabit, or sleep sensually. They are but one appetite, and we only need to see a person do any one of these things to know how great a sensualist he is. The impure can neither stand nor sit with purity.
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Can there be any greater reproach than an idle learning? Learn to split wood, at least.
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We have not so good a right to hate any as our Friend.
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It is not worth the while to live by rich cookery.
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We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.
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History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning ofthings, which natural history might with reason assume to do but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,--when did burdock and plantain sprout first?
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There is no just and serene criticism as yet.
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All men are children, and of one family.
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We loiter in winter while it is already spring.
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I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion. I would rather ride on earth in an ox cart, with a free circulation, than go to heaven in the fancy car of an excursion train and breathe a malaria all the way.
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It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.
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Should not every apartment in which man dwells be lofty enough to create some obscurity overhead, where flickering shadows may play at evening about the rafters?
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Color, which is the poet's wealth, is so expensive that most take to mere outline sketches and become men of science.
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In Adam's fall We sinned all. In the new Adam's rise, We shall all reach the skies.
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Man is an animal who more than any other can adapt himself to all climates and circumstances.
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Why should I feel lonely? is not our planet in the Milky Way?
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Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve.
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The echo is, to some extent, an original sound, and therein is the magic and charm of it. It is not merely a repetition of what was worth repeating in the bell, but partly the voice of the wood the same trivial words and notes sung by a wood-nymph.
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Every poet has trembled on the verge of science.
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In the religion of all nations a purity is hinted at, which, I fear, men never attain to.
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