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But the divinest poem, or the life of a great man, is the severest satire.... The greater the genius, the keener the edge of the satire.

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
Genius
Keener
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Severest
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Edges
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Poetry
Divinest

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve.
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A traveler who looks at things with an impartial eye may see what the oldest inhabitant has not observed.
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Not secondary to the sun, she gives us his blaze again, Void of its flame, and sheds a softer day... In Heaven queen she is among the spheres She, mistress-like, makes all things to be pure.
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I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beechtree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines.
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As for Doing-good, that is one of the professions which are full.
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We have heard much about the poetry of mathematics, but very little of it has yet been sung. The ancients had a juster notion of their poetic value than we.
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I make it my business to extract from Nature what ever nutriment she can furnish me.... I milk the sky and the earth.
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I once found a kernel of corn in the middle of a deep wood by Walden, tucked in behind a lichen on a pine, about as high as my head, either by a crow or a squirrel. It was a mile at least from any corn-field.
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I do not see why the schoolmaster should be taxed to support the priest, and not the priest the schoolmaster.
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No man who acts from a sense of duty ever puts the lesser duty above the greater. No man has the desire and the ability to work onhigh things, but he has also the ability to build himself a high staging.
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Be not anxious to avoid poverty. In this way the wealth of the universe may be securely invested.
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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.
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In winter we lead a more inward life. Our hearts are warm and cheery, like cottages under drifts.
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If some are prosecuted for abusing children, others deserve to be prosecuted for maltreating the face of nature committed to their care.
Henry David Thoreau
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I am not responsible for the successful working of the machinery of society.
Henry David Thoreau
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The only way to speak the truth is to speak lovingly.
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I wish to learn what life has to teach, and not, when I come to die, discover that I have not truly lived.
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I have a room all to myself it is nature.
Henry David Thoreau
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A Friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us.
Henry David Thoreau
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The poet is no tender slip of fairy stock, who requires peculiar institutions and edicts for his defense, but the toughest son ofearth and of Heaven, and by his greater strength and endurance his fainting companions will recognize the God in him. It is the worshipers of beauty, after all, who have done the real pioneer work of the world.
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