Quote

Left to herself, nature is always more or less civilized, and delights in a certain refinement but where the axe has encroached upon the edge of the forest, the dead and unsightly limbs of the pine, which she had concealed with green banks of verdure, are exposed to sight.

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
Left
Forests
Delights
Nature
Edges
Concealed
Certain
Delight
Limbs
Always
Sight
Banks
Green
Forest
Unsightly
Dead
Exposed
Verdure
Upon
Civilized
Pine
Less
Edge
Refinement

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual friends, that we might go and meet their ideal cousins.
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The forests are held cheap after the white pine has been culled out and the explorers and hunters pray for rain only to clear theatmosphere of smoke.
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No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof.
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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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Morning work! By the blushes of Aurora and the music of Memnon, what should be man's morning work in this world?
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Go confidently ... Live the life that you imagined.
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Rise free from care before the dawn and seek adventure. Let the noon find you by other lakes, and the night overtake thee everywhere at home. There are no larger fields than these, no worthier games than may here be played.
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Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buries itself alive.
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Keep up the fires of thought, and all will go well.
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Alas! the culture of an Irishman is an enterprise to be undertaken with a sort of moral bog hoe.
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A fortified town is like a man cased in the heavy armor of antiquity, with a horse-load of broadswords and small arms slung to him, endeavoring to go about his business.
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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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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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We slander the hyena man is the fiercest and cruelest animal.
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This life we live is a strange dream, and I don't believe at all any account men give of it.
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Don't be afraid that your life will end, be afraid that it will never begin!
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How shall we account for our pursuits, if they are original? We get the language with which to describe our various lives out of acommon mint.
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Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights.
Henry David Thoreau
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Though the hen should sit all day, she could lay only one egg, and, besides, would not have picked up materials for another.
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As for your high towers and monuments, there was a crazy fellow once in this town who undertook to dig through to China, and he got so far that, as he said, he heard the Chinese pots and kettles rattle but I think that I shall not go out of my way to admire the hole which he made.
Henry David Thoreau