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Art may varnish and gild, but it can do no more.

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
Gild
Varnish
Art
May

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At least let us have healthy books.
Henry David Thoreau
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Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.
Henry David Thoreau
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The sea, vast and wild as it is, bears thus the waste and wrecks of human art to its remotest shore. There is no telling what it may not vomit up.
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There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hand. I love a broad margin to my life.
Henry David Thoreau
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Nature is an admirable schoolmistress.
Henry David Thoreau
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I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least - and it is commonly more than that - sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements.
Henry David Thoreau
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The man who thrusts his manners upon me does as if he were to insist on introducing me to his cabinet of curiosities, when I wished to see himself.
Henry David Thoreau
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Of what significance are the things you can forget.
Henry David Thoreau
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If misery loves company, misery has company enough.
Henry David Thoreau
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I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.
Henry David Thoreau
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But labor of the hands, even when pursued to the verge of drudgery, is perhaps never the worst form of idleness. It has a constantand imperishable moral, and to the scholar it yields a classic result.
Henry David Thoreau
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Roads are made for horses and men of business. I do not travel in them much.
Henry David Thoreau
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Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, seewhat isbefore you, and walkon intofuturity.
Henry David Thoreau
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However much we admire the orator's occasional bursts of eloquence, the noblest written words are commonly as far behind or abovethe fleeting spoken language as the firmament with its stars is behind the clouds.
Henry David Thoreau
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It must be confessed that horses at present work too exclusively for men, rarely men for horses and the brute degenerates in man's society.
Henry David Thoreau
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Many have believed that Walden reached quite through to the other side of the globe.
Henry David Thoreau
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The cart before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful. Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must bestripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living laid for a foundation.
Henry David Thoreau
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Unless the human race perspire more than I do, there is no occasion to live by the sweat of their brow. If men cannot get on without money (the smallest amount will suffice), the truest method of earning it is by working as a laborer at one dollar per day. You are least dependent so I speak as an expert, having used several kinds of labor.
Henry David Thoreau
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The young pines springing up in the corn-fields from year to year are to me a refreshing fact.
Henry David Thoreau
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Each humblest plant, or weed, as we call it, stands there to express some thought or mood of ours and yet how long it stands in vain!... Beauty and true wealth are always thus cheap and despised.
Henry David Thoreau