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At present the globe goes with a shattered constitution in its orbit.... No doubt the simple powers of nature, properly directed by man, would make it healthy and a paradise as the laws of man's own constitution but wait to be obeyed, to restore him to health and happiness.

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
Waiting
Wait
Restore
Law
Laws
Globe
Happiness
Constitution
Globes
Simple
Healthy
Directed
Nature
Health
Properly
Make
Goes
Paradise
Obeyed
Would
Present
Powers
Orbit
Men
Doubt
Reform
Shattered

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life.
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Every sunset I witness inspires me with the desire to go to West as distant and as fair as that which the sun goes down. Eastward I go only by force but westward I go free.
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The best books are not read even by those who are called good readers. What does our Concord culture amount to? There is in this town, with a very few exceptions, no taste for the best or for very good books even in English literature, whose words all can read and spell.
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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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The art of life, of a poet's life, is, not having anything to do, to do something.
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Blessed are they who never read a newspaper, for they shall see Nature, and through her, God.
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Love is the profoundest of secrets. Divulged, even to the beloved, it is no longer Love. As if it were merely I that loved you. When love ceases, then it is divulged.
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You don't know your testament when you see it.
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We cannot write well or truly but what we write with gusto.
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It required some rudeness to disturb with our boat the mirror-like surface of the water, in which every twig and blade of grass was so faithfully reflected too faithfully indeed for art to imitate, for only Nature may exaggerate herself.
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There are sure to be two prescriptions diametrically opposite.
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Give me the old familiar world, post-office and all, with this ever new self, with this infinite expectation and faith, which does not know when it is beaten.
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Alas! the culture of an Irishman is an enterprise to be undertaken with a sort of moral bog hoe.
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For eighteen hundred years, though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of legislation?
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Where there is a brave man, in the thickest of the fight, there is the post of honor.
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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.'
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Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me.
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Nature is goodness crystallized.
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The young pines springing up in the corn-fields from year to year are to me a refreshing fact.
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Good for the body is the work of the body, good for the soul the work of the soul, and good for either the work of the other.
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