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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
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Henry David Thoreau
Age: 44 †
Born: 1817
Born: July 12
Died: 1862
Died: May 6
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
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More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
If to chaffer and higgle are bad in trade, they are much worse in Love. It demands directness as of an arrow.
Henry David Thoreau
In the planting of the seeds of most trees, the best gardeners do no more than follow Nature, though they may not know it.
Henry David Thoreau
We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers.
Henry David Thoreau
An unclean person is universally a slothful one.
Henry David Thoreau
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
The universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to discuss the characters of individuals.
Henry David Thoreau
A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of any prince.
Henry David Thoreau
Left to herself, nature is always more or less civilized, and delights in a certain refinement but where the axe has encroached upon the edge of the forest, the dead and unsightly limbs of the pine, which she had concealed with green banks of verdure, are exposed to sight.
Henry David Thoreau
Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment
Henry David Thoreau
Every gazette brings accounts of the untutored freaks of the wind,--shipwrecks and hurricanes which the mariner and planter acceptas special or general providences but they touch our consciences, they remind us of our sins. Another deluge would disgrace mankind.
Henry David Thoreau
What can be expressed in words can be expressed in life.
Henry David Thoreau
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.
Henry David Thoreau
No man's thoughts are new, but the style of their expression is the never-failing novelty which cheers and refreshes men. If we were to answer the question, whether the mass of men, as we know them, talk as the standard authors and reviewers write, or rather as this man writes, we should say that he alone begins to write their language at all.
Henry David Thoreau
Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.
Henry David Thoreau
I repeat that in this sense the most splendid court in Christendom is provincial, having authority to consult about Transalpine interests only, and not the affairs of Rome. A prætor or proconsul would suffice to settle the questions which absorb the attention of the English Parliament and the American Congress.
Henry David Thoreau
Literary gentlemen, editors, and critics think that they know how to write, because they have studied grammar and rhetoric but they are egregiously mistaken. The art of composition is as simple as the discharge of a bullet from a rifle, and its masterpieces imply an infinitely greater force behind them.
Henry David Thoreau
Endeavor to live the life you have imagined.
Henry David Thoreau
I may add that I am enjoying existence as much as ever, and regret nothing.
Henry David Thoreau
If you give money, spend yourself with it.
Henry David Thoreau
Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other breaks into pieces.
Henry David Thoreau