Quote

Nature has from the first expanded the minute blossoms of the forest only toward the heavens, above men's heads and unobserved bythem. We see only the flowers that are under our feet in the meadows.

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
Firsts
Flowers
Expanded
First
Minute
Blossoms
Men
Flower
Meadows
Toward
Heavens
Minutes
Forest
Feet
Heads
Heaven
Forests
Nature
Observation
Unobserved

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Friends will not only live in harmony, but in melody.
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If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
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Say, Not so, and you will out circle the philosophers.
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Heroes are often the most ordinary of men.
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It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are... than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.
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Mythology is the crop which the Old World bore before its soil was exhausted.
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For one that comes with a pencil to sketch or sing, a thousand come with an axe or rifle. What a coarse and imperfect use Indiansand hunters make of nature! No wonder that their race is so soon exterminated.
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If you will not try, you will go to your grave with your song still inside you.
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Thus the State never intentionally confronts a man's sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion.
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Let Harlequin be taken with a fit of the colic, and his trappings will have to serve that mood too.
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Spring. March fans it, April christens it, and May puts on its jacket and trousers.
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As the least drop of wine tinges the whole goblet, so the least particle of truth colors our whole life.
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Many old people receive pensions for no other reason, it seems to me, but as a compensation for having lived a long time ago.
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The imagination never forgets it is a re-membering. It is not foundationless, but most reasonable, and it alone uses all the knowledge of the intellect.
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The world rests on principles.
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If we cannot sing of faith and triumph, we will sing our despair. We will be that kind of bird. There are day owls, and there arenight owls, and each is beautiful and even musical while about its business.
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Eastward I go only by force but westward I go free.
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I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality.
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Impulse is, after all, the best linguist its logic, if not conformable to Aristotle, cannot fail to be most convincing.
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