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Of what significance the light of day, if it is not the reflection of an inward dawn?--to what purpose is the veil of night withdrawn, if the morning reveals nothing to the soul? It is merely garish and glaring.
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
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Ecologist
Environmentalist
Essayist
Naturalist
Philosopher
Poet
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Soul
Dawn
Garish
Nothing
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Glaring
Merely
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Morning
Veil
Purpose
Veils
Inspirational
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Night
Inward
Light
Significance
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one.
Henry David Thoreau
If I ever see more clearly at one time than at another, the medium through which I see is clearer.
Henry David Thoreau
You don't know your testament when you see it.
Henry David Thoreau
That is a pathetic inquiry among travelers and geographers after the site of ancient Troy. It is not near where they think it is.When a thing is decayed and gone, how indistinct must be the place it occupied!
Henry David Thoreau
The fishermen say that the thundering of the pond scares the fishes and prevents their biting.
Henry David Thoreau
It is only necessary to behold the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair's breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance ... To perceive freshly, with fresh senses is to be inspired.
Henry David Thoreau
The art of life, of a poet's life, is, not having anything to do, to do something.
Henry David Thoreau
I thrive best on solitude. If I have had a companion only one day in a week, unless it were one or two I could name, I find that the value of the week to me has been seriously affected. It dissipates my days, and often it takes me another week to get over it.
Henry David Thoreau
Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping.
Henry David Thoreau
Much of our poetry has the very best manners, but no character.
Henry David Thoreau
There are none happy in the world but beings who enjoy freely a vast horizon.
Henry David Thoreau
The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.
Henry David Thoreau
It is worth the expense of youthful days and costly hours, if you learn only some words of an ancient language, which are raised out of the trivialness of the street, to be perpetual suggestions and provocations. It is not in vain that the farmer remembers and repeats the few Latin words which he has heard.
Henry David Thoreau
Continued traveling is far from productive. It begins with wearing away the soles of the shoes, and making the feet sore, and erelong it will wear a man clean up, after making his heart sore into the bargain. I have observed that the afterlife of those who have traveled much is very pathetic.
Henry David Thoreau
Time is like a handful of sand - the tighter you grasp it, the faster it runs through your fingers.
Henry David Thoreau
History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning ofthings, which natural history might with reason assume to do but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,--when did burdock and plantain sprout first?
Henry David Thoreau
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?
Henry David Thoreau
It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.
Henry David Thoreau
It would be worth the while if in each town there were a committee appointed to see that the beauty of the town received no detriment. If we have the largest boulder in the county, then it should not belong to an individual, nor be made into door-steps.
Henry David Thoreau
Music never stops it is only the listening that is intermittent.
Henry David Thoreau
