Quote

Was awakened in the night to a strain of music dying away, - passing travellers singing. My being was so expanded and infinitely and divinely related for a brief season that I saw how unexhausted, how almost wholly unimproved, was man's capacity for a divine life. When I remembered what a narrow and finite life I should anon awake to!

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
Life
Singing
Season
Awakened
Dying
Awake
Infinitely
Divine
Related
Brief
Unimproved
Almost
Remembered
Wholly
Travellers
Away
Seasons
Strain
Anon
Night
Passing
Finite
Divinely
Music
Capacity
Narrow
Expanded
Men
Saws
Passings
Traveller

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Bankruptcy and repudiation are the springboards from which much of our civilization vaults and turns its somersets, but the savagestands on the unelastic plank of famine.
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This curious world we inhabit is more wonderful than convenient more beautiful than it is useful it is more to be admired and enjoyed than used.
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Even Nature is observed to have her playful moods or aspects, of which man sometimes seems to be the sport.
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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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A man's interest in a single bluebird is worth more than a complete but dry list of the fauna and flora of a town.
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Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.
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Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage.
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The fact is, mental philosophy is very like Poverty, which, you know, begins at home and indeed, when it goes abroad, it is poverty itself.
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After all the field of battle possesses many advantages over the drawing-room. There at least is no room for pretension or excessive ceremony, no shaking of hands or rubbing of noses, which make one doubt your sincerity, but hearty as well as hard hand-play. It at least exhibits one of the faces of humanity, the former only a mask.
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While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.
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Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity is open.
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. . . we should be men first, and subjects afterward.
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The mass never comes up to the standard of its best member, but on the contrary degrades itself to a level with the lowest.
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While the Governor, and the Mayor, and countless officers of the Commonwealth are at large, the champions of liberty are imprisoned.
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It is after we get home that we really go over the mountain, if ever.
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We find it difficult to choose our direction because it does not yet exist distinctly in our idea.
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New ideas come into this world somewhat like falling meteors, with a flash and an explosion.
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Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.
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At least let us have healthy books.
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