Quote

In the love of narrow souls I make many short voyages but in vain-I find no sea room-but in great souls I sail before the wind without a watch, and never reach the shore.

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
Love
Rooms
Souls
Soul
Sea
Find
Reach
Without
Short
Voyages
Many
Watches
Sail
Great
Watch
Narrow
Make
Room
Shore
Never
Wind
Vain

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We must love our friend so much that she shall be associated with our purest and holiest thoughts alone.
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Generally speaking, the political news, whether domestic or foreign, might be written today for the next ten years with sufficientaccuracy. Most revolutions in society have not power to interest, still less alarm us but tell me that our rivers are drying up, or the genus pine dying out in the country, and I might attend.
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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.
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Thank God, they cannot cut down the clouds!
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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.
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I have seen some whose consciences, owing undoubtedly to former indulgence, had grown to be as irritable as spoilt children, and at length gave them no peace. They did not know when to swallow their cud, and their lives of course yielded no milk.
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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.
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It is an unfortunate discovery certainly, that of a law which binds us where we did not know before that we were bound.
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What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground.
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A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of any prince.
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While the very inhabitants of New England were thus fabling about the country a hundred miles inland, which was a terra incognitato them,... Champlain, the first Governor of Canada,... had already gone to war against the Iroquois in their forest forts, and penetrated to the Great Lakes and wintered there, before a Pilgrim had heard of New England.
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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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We loiter in winter while it is already spring.
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All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy.
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However mean your life is, meet it and live it.
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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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Almost all wild apples are handsome. They cannot be too gnarly and crabbed and rusty to look at. The gnarliest will have some redeeming traits even to the eye.
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A man of fine perceptions is more truly feminine than a merely sentimental woman.
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It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.
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Invariably our best nights were those when it rained.
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