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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significance the light of day, if it is not the reflection of an inward dawn?--to what purpose is the veil of night withdrawn, if the morning reveals nothing to the soul?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
Diarist
Ecologist
Environmentalist
Essayist
Naturalist
Philosopher
Poet
Translator
Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Soul
Dawn
Garish
Nothing
Reflection
Glaring
Merely
Withdrawn
Morning
Veil
Purpose
Veils
Inspirational
Reveals
Night
Inward
Light
Significance

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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The only way to speak the truth is to speak lovingly.
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We do not enjoy poetry unless we know it to be poetry.
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No mortal is alert enough to be present at the first dawn of spring.
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The dry grasses are not dead for me. A beautiful form has as much life at one season as another.
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I hate the present modes of living and getting a living. Farming and shopkeeping and working at a trade or profession are all odious to me. I should relish getting my living in a simple, primitive fashion.
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Let every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made.
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I seem to have dodged all my days with one or two persons, and lived upon expectation,--as if the bud would surely blossom and soI am content to live.
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As a man grows older, his ability to sit still and follow indoor occupations increases. He grows vespertinal in his habits as theevening of life approaches, till at last he comes forth only just before sundown, and gets all the walk that he requires in half an hour.
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It behooves every man to see that his influence is on the side of justice, and let the courts make their own characters.
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Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buries itself alive.
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Biography, too, is liable to the same objection it should be autobiography. Let us not, as the Germans advise, endeavor to go abroad and vex our bowels that we may be somebody else to explain him. If I am not I, who will be?
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It is the man determines what is said, not the words.
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A thoroughbred business man cannot enter heartily upon the business of life without first looking into his accounts.
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I am accustomed to think very long of going anywhere,--am slow to move. I hope to hear a response of the oracle first.
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Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.
Henry David Thoreau
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Being is the great explainer.
Henry David Thoreau
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Front yards are not made to walk in, but, at most, through, and you could go in the back way.
Henry David Thoreau
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We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers.
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The most attractive sentences are, perhaps, not the wisest, but the surest and roundest. They are spoken firmly and conclusively,as if the speaker had a right to know what he says, and if not wise, they have at least been well learned.
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We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.
Henry David Thoreau