Quote

The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let us spend our lives in conceiving then. The poet or the artist never yet had so fair and noble a design but some of his posterity at least could accomplish it.

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
Never
Design
Accomplish
Conceiving
Answers
Noble
Conceptions
Least
Track
Posterity
Imagination
Constantly
Laid
Whether
Fast
Conception
Universe
Travel
Slow
Lives
Poet
Fairs
Artist
Spend
Fair
Obediently

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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May we so love as never to have occasion to repent of our love!
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The object of love expands and grows before us to eternity, until it includes all that is lovely, and we become all that can love.
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The birds I heard today, which, fortunately, did not come within the scope of my science, sang as freshly as if it had been the first morning of creation.
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You never gain something but that you lose something.
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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.
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All things in this world must be seen with youthful, hopeful eyes.
Henry David Thoreau
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The eye is the jewel of the body.
Henry David Thoreau
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It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
Henry David Thoreau
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It is a relief to read some true book, wherein all are equally dead,--equally alive. I think the best parts of Shakespeare would only be enhanced by the most thrilling and affecting events. I have found it so. And so much the more, as they are not intended for consolation.
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The man who takes the liberty to live is superior to all the laws, by virtue of his relation to the lawmaker.
Henry David Thoreau
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Nature is fair in proportion as the youth is pure. The heavens and the earth are one flower the earth is the calyx, the heavens the corolla.
Henry David Thoreau
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We make needless ado about capital punishment,--taking lives, when there is no life to take.
Henry David Thoreau
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As they say in geology, time never fails, there is always enough of it, so I may say, criticism never fails.
Henry David Thoreau
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Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows.
Henry David Thoreau
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I do not speak to those who are well employed, in whatever circumstances, and they know whether they are well employed or not but mainly to the mass of men who are discontented, and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they might improve them.
Henry David Thoreau
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The animal merely makes a bed, which he warms with his body, in a sheltered place but man, having discovered fire, boxes up someair in a spacious apartment, and warms that.... Thus he goes a step or two beyond instinct, and saves a little time for the fine arts.
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Beside some philosophers of larger vision, Carlyle stands like an honest, half-despairing boy, grasping at some details only of their world systems.
Henry David Thoreau
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I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite - only a sense of existence. Well, anything for variety.
Henry David Thoreau
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They were pleasant spring days, in which the winter of man's discontent was thawing as well as the earth, and the life that had lain torpid began to stretch itself.
Henry David Thoreau
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Many men walk by day few walk by night. It is a different season.
Henry David Thoreau