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It seems to me that the god that is commonly worshipped in civilized countries is not at all divine, though he bears a divine name, but is the overwhelming authority and respectability of mankind combined. Men reverence one another, not yet God.

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
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
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Commonly
Country
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Men
Mankind
Reverence
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Civilized
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Atheism
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More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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The prosaic man sees things badly, or with the bodily sense but the poet sees them clad in beauty, with the spiritual sense.
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When the first light dawned on the earth, and the birds awoke, and the brave river was heard rippling confidently seaward, and the nimble early rising wind rustled the oak leaves about our tent, all people, having reinforced their bodies and their souls with sleep, and cast aside doubt and fear, were invited to unattempted adventures.
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Let nothing come between you and the light.
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I hardly know an intellectual man, even, who is so broad and truly liberal that you can think aloud in his society.
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The oldest, wisest politician grows not more human so, but is merely a gray wharf rat at last.
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What wealth is it to have such friends that we cannot think of them without elevation!
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There is a certain class of unbelievers who sometimes ask me such questions as, if I think that I can live on vegetable food alone and to strike at the root of the matter at once,--for the root is faith,--I am accustomed to answer such, that I can live on board nails. If they cannot understand that, they cannot understand much that I have to say.
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It would seem as if the very language of our parlors would lose all its nerve and degenerate into palaver wholly, our lives pass at such remoteness from its symbols, and its metaphors and tropes are necessarily so far fetched.
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It is difficult to begin without borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit your fellowmen to have an interest in your enterprise.
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A man sits as many risks as he runs.
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Nature is not made after such a fashion as we would have her. We piously exaggerate her wonders, as the scenery around our home.
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I fear chiefly lest my expression may not be extravagant enough, may not wander far enough beyond the narrow limit of my daily experience, so as to be adequate to the truth of which I have been convinced.
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Let go of the past and go for the future.
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Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge college is as solitary as a dervis in the desert.
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Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.
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We bless and curse ourselves.
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The same soil is good for men and for trees. A man's health requires as many acres of meadow to his prospect as his farm does loads of muck.
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Fame itself is but an epitaph as late, as false, as true.
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The man whose horse trots a mile in a minute does not carry the most important messages.
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