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For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it (life), whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to 'glorify God and enjoy him forever.'

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
Devil
Hastily
Strange
Concluded
Forever
Glorify
Whether
Somewhat
Enjoy
Chief
Ends
Chiefs
Men
Appears
Life
Uncertainty

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself.
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I am not afraid of praise, for I have practiced it on myself.
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Economy is a subject which admits of being treated with levity, but it cannot so be disposed of.
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What can be expressed in words can be expressed in life.
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The prosaic man sees things badly, or with the bodily sense but the poet sees them clad in beauty, with the spiritual sense.
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Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify.
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Count your age with friends but not with years.
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We are all of us more or less active physiognomists.
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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!
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Show me two villages, one embowered in trees and blazing with all the glories of October, the other a merely trivial and treelesswaste, or with only a single tree or two for suicides, and I shall be sure that in the latter will be found the most starved and bigoted religionists and the most desperate drinkers.
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Every oak tree started out as a couple of nuts who stood their ground.
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I once found a kernel of corn in the middle of a deep wood by Walden, tucked in behind a lichen on a pine, about as high as my head, either by a crow or a squirrel. It was a mile at least from any corn-field.
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There are none happy in the world but beings who enjoy freely a vast horizon.
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In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, they had better aim at something high.
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Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.
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Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!
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Methinks my own soul must be a bright invisible green.
Henry David Thoreau
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All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy.
Henry David Thoreau
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The kindness I have longest remembered has been of this sort, the sort unsaid so far behind the speaker's lips that almost it already lay in my heart. It did not have far to go to be communicated.
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To meet the objections of some inveterate cavillers, I may as well state, that if I dined out occasionally, as I always had done,and I trust shall have opportunities to do again, it was frequently to the detriment of my domestic arrangements.
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