Quote

We waded so gently and reverently, or we pulled together so smoothly, that the fishes of thought were not scared from the stream, nor feared any angler on the bank, but came and went grandly, like the clouds which came and went on the western sky, and the mother-o'-pearl flocks which sometimes form and dissolve there.

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
Sometimes
Western
Fishing
Pearl
Waded
Like
Sea
Streams
Feared
Angler
Went
Fishes
Gently
Reverently
Came
Boat
Pearls
Grandly
Mother
Clouds
Pulled
Anglers
Form
Rivers
Stream
Smoothly
Thought
Scared
Lakes
Dissolve
Together
Sky
Bank
Flocks

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The husbandman is always a better Greek than the scholar is prepared to appreciate, and the old custom still survives, while antiquarians and scholars grow gray in commemorating it.
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We are born as innocents. We are polluted by advice.
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There are sure to be two prescriptions diametrically opposite.
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At death our friends and relatives either draw nearer to us and are found out, or depart farther from us and are forgotten. Friends are as often brought nearer together as separated by death.
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If there were one who lived wholly without the use of money, the State itself would hesitate to demand it of him. But the rich man--not to make any invidious comparison--is always sold to the institution which makes him rich.... Thus his moral ground is taken from under his feet.
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Art can never match the luxury and superfluity of Nature. In the former all is seen it cannot afford concealed wealth, and is niggardly in comparison but Nature, even when she is scant and thin outwardly, satisfies us still by the assurance of a certain generosity at the roots.
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I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.
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Books that are books are all that you want, and there are but a half dozen in any thousand.
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Music is the crystallization of sound.
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Every ambitious would-be empire, clarions it abroad that she is conquering the world to bring it peace, security and freedom, and it is sacrificing her sons only for the most noble and humanitarian purposes. That is a lie and it is an ancient lie, yet generations still rise and believe it.
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When I go into a museum and see the mummies wrapped in their linen bandages, I see that the lives of men began to need reform as long ago as when they walked the earth. I come out into the streets, and meet men who declare that the time is near at hand for the redemption of the race. But as men lived in Thebes, so do they live in Dunstable today.
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In the planting of the seeds of most trees, the best gardeners do no more than follow Nature, though they may not know it.
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Art may varnish and gild, but it can do no more.
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When my legs begin to move, the thoughts begin to flow.
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A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It is continually receiving new life and motion from above. It is intermediate in its nature between land and sky.
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I do not know but it is too much to read one newspaper a week. I have tried it recently, and for so long it seems to me that I have not dwelt in my native region. The sun, the clouds, the snow, the trees say not so much to me. You cannot serve two masters.
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I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.
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It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such.
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The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.
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Every people have gods to suit their circumstances.
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