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Many are concerned about the monuments of the West and the East -- to know who built them. For my part, I should like to know who in those days did not build them -- who were above such trifling.

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
Like
East
West
Build
Concerned
Built
Days
Monuments
Part
Trifling
Many
Monument

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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Why should not our whole life and its scenery be actually thus fair and distinct? All our lives want a suitable background. They should at least, like the life of the anchorite, be as impressive to behold as objects in a desert, a broken shaft or crumbling mound against a limitless horizon.
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You will pardon some obscurities, for there are more secrets in my trade than in most men's, and yet not voluntarily kept, but inseparable from its very nature. I would gladly tell all that I know about it, and never paint No Admittance on my gate.
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The voice of nature is always encouraging.
Henry David Thoreau
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Truly, our greatest blessings are very cheap.
Henry David Thoreau
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All the past is here, present to be tried let it approve itself if it can.
Henry David Thoreau
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Let us not underrate the value of a fact it will one day flower into a truth.
Henry David Thoreau
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As for Doing-good, that is one of the professions which are full.
Henry David Thoreau
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People seldom hit what they do not aim at.
Henry David Thoreau
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One should be always on the trail of one's own deepest nature. For it is the fearless living out of your own essential nature that connects you to the Divine.
Henry David Thoreau
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In winter we lead a more inward life. Our hearts are warm and cheery, like cottages under drifts.
Henry David Thoreau
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All health and success does me good, however far off and withdrawn it may appear all disease and failure helps to make me sad anddoes me evil, however much sympathy it may have with me or I with it.
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You only need sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns.
Henry David Thoreau
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Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.
Henry David Thoreau
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When the reptile is attacked at one mouth of his burrow, he shows himself at another.
Henry David Thoreau
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Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God's property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.
Henry David Thoreau
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Poverty ... It is life near the bone, where it is sweetest.
Henry David Thoreau
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The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth.
Henry David Thoreau
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For if we take the ages into our account, may there not be a civilization going on among brutes as well as men?
Henry David Thoreau
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All men are children, and of one family.
Henry David Thoreau
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I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite - only a sense of existence. Well, anything for variety.
Henry David Thoreau