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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.

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
Expensive
Men
Mere
Poet
Color
Wealth
Sketches
Science
Outline
Become
Outlines
Take

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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When we are in health, all sounds fife and drum for us we hear the notes of music in the air, or catch its echoes dying away when we awake in the dawn.
Henry David Thoreau
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I think it would be worth the while to introduce a school of children to such [an oak grove], that they may get an idea of the primitive oaks before they are all gone, instead of hiring botanists to lecture to them when it is too late.
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The pleasure we feel in music springs from the obedience which is in it.
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Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, and hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance.
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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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In some pictures of Provincetown the persons of the inhabitants are not drawn below the ankles, so much being supposed to be buried in the sand.
Henry David Thoreau
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It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.
Henry David Thoreau
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The effect of a good government is to make life more valuable of a bad one, to make it less valuable.
Henry David Thoreau
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Truly, our greatest blessings are very cheap.
Henry David Thoreau
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A man receives only what he is ready to receive... The phenomenon or fact that cannot in any wise be linked with the rest of what he has observed, he does not observe.
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Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage.
Henry David Thoreau
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There must be some nerve and heroism in our love, as of a winter morning.
Henry David Thoreau
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Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man.
Henry David Thoreau
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Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life ... would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights' Entertainments.
Henry David Thoreau
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It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.
Henry David Thoreau
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If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.
Henry David Thoreau
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It is true, we are such poor navigators that our thoughts, for the most part, stand off and on upon a harborless coast, are conversant only with the bights of the bays of poesy, or steer for the public ports of entry, and go into the dry docks of science, where they merely refit for this world, and no natural currents concur to individualize them.
Henry David Thoreau
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I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both. I love the wild not less than the good.
Henry David Thoreau
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We do not associate the idea of antiquity with the ocean, nor wonder how it looked a thousand years ago, as we do of the land, for it was equally wild and unfathomable always.
Henry David Thoreau
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Nature has from the first expanded the minute blossoms of the forest only toward the heavens, above men's heads and unobserved bythem. We see only the flowers that are under our feet in the meadows.
Henry David Thoreau