Quote

Decay and disease are often beautiful, like the pearly tear of the shellfish and the hectic glow of consumption.

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
Decay
Consumption
Disease
Tears
Pearly
Often
Shellfish
Beautiful
Hectic
Like
Glow
Tear

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If Columbus was the first to discover the islands, Americus Vespucius and Cabot, and the Puritans, and we their descendants, havediscovered only the shores of America.
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The perception of beauty is a moral test.
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The virtues of a superior man are like the wind the virtues of a common man are like the grass the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends.
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Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.
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The outward is only the outside of that which is within. Men are not concealed under habits, but are revealed by them they are their true clothes.
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Whatever beauty we behold, the more it is distant, serene, and cold, the purer and more durable it is. It is better to warm ourselves with ice than with fire.
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A sufficiently great and generous trust could never be abused.
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I would not have every man nor every part of a man cultivated, any more than I would have every acre of earth cultivated: part will be tillage, but the greater part will be meadow and forest, not only serving an immediate use, but preparing a mould against a distant future, by the annual decay of the vegetation which it supports.
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There is a slumbering subterranean fire in nature which never goes out, and which no cold can chill.
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Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe.
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Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure.
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If within the sophisticated man there is not an unsophisticated one, then he is but one of the devil's angels.
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I say, break the law.
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Sell your clothes- keep your thoughts.
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Glances of true beauty can be seen in the faces of those who live in true meekness.
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It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however, ancient, can be trusted without proof. ... Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.
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It [is of] some advantage to live a primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization, if only to learn what are the gross necessities of life.
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Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.
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