Quote

Much verse fails of being poetry because it was not written exactly at the right crisis, though it may have been inconceivably near to it. It is only by a miracle that poetry is written at all. It is not recoverable thought, but a hue caught from a vaster receding thought.

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
Written
Near
Inconceivably
Though
Miracle
Vaster
Inspirational
Caught
Receding
Thought
Crisis
May
Exactly
Hue
Right
Poet
Verse
Much
Failing
Verses
Poetry
Fails

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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The poet uses the results of science and philosophy, and generalizes their widest deductions.
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I should be glad if all the meadows on the earth were left in a wild state, if that were the consequence of men's beginning to redeem themselves.
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For eighteen hundred years, though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of legislation?
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It has been so written, for the most part, that the times it describes are with remarkable propriety called dark ages. They are dark, as one has observed, because we are so in the dark about them.
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Front yards are not made to walk in, but, at most, through, and you could go in the back way.
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As all curves have reference to their centres or foci, so all beauty of character has reference to the soul, and is a graceful gesture of recognition or waving of the body toward it.
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The more you have thought and written on a given theme, the more you can still write. Thought breeds thought. It grows under your hands.
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They who are continually shocked by slavery have some right to be shocked by the violent death of the slaveholder, but no others.Such will be more shocked by his life than by his death.
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He who cannot exaggerate is not qualified to utter truth.
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Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.
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Even trees do not die without a groan.
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How can he remember well his ignorance - which his growth requires - who has so often to use his knowledge?
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If private men are obliged to perform the offices of government, to protect the weak and dispense justice, then the government becomes only a hired man, or clerk, to perform menial or indifferent services.
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How meanly and grossly do we deal with nature!
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What is called common sense is excellent in its department, and as invaluable as the virtue of conformity in the army and navy,--for there must be subordination,--but uncommon sense, that sense which is common only to the wisest, is as much more excellent as it is more rare.
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I fear that I have not got much to say about Canada, not having seen much what I got by going to Canada was a cold.
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In the long run, we only hit what we aim at.
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I love nature, I love the landscape, because it is so sincere. It never cheats me. It never jests. It is cheerfully, musically earnest. I lie and relie on the earth.
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If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.
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I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.
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