Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau

Writer, Philosopher

Henry David Thoreau was an American author and philosopher known for his work 'Walden' and his advocacy for naturalism and civil disobedience.

Men Nature Life Thinking Book Inspirational
Born
July 12, 1817
Died
May 6, 1862
Quotes
2.8K
Rank
#46

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Henry David Thoreau quotes (page 105 of 139)

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"While almost all men feel an attraction drawing them to society, few are attracted strongly to Nature. In their reaction to Naturemen appear to me for the most part, notwithstanding their arts, lower than the animals. It is not often a beautiful relation, as in the case of the animals. How little appreciation of the beauty of the landscape there is among us! We have to be told that the Greeks called the world Kosmos, Beauty, or Order, but we do not see clearly why they did so, and we esteem it at best only a curious philological fact."

Beauty Beautiful Appreciation
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"Let the beautiful laws prevail. Let us not weary ourselves by resisting them."

Beauty Beautiful Law
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"Men nowhere, east or west, live yet a natural life, round which the vine clings, and which the elm willingly shadows. Man would desecrate it by his touch, and so the beauty of the world remains veiled to him. He needs not only to be spiritualized, but naturalized, on the soil of earth."

Life Beauty Nature
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"It is comparatively a faint and reflected beauty that is admired, not an essential and intrinsic one. It is because the old are weak, feel their mortality, and think that they have measured the strength of man. They will not boast; they will be frank and humble. Well, let them have the few poor comforts they can keep. Humility is still a very human virtue. They look back on life, and so see not into the future. The prospect of the young is forward and unbounded, mingling the future with the present."

Beauty Humility Humble
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"All men are really most attracted by the beauty of plain speech, and they even write in a florid style in imitation of this. Theyprefer to be misunderstood rather than to come short of its exuberance."

Beauty Writing Men
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"The world, which the Greeks called Beauty, has been made such by being gradually divested of every ornament which was not fitted to endure."

Beauty Greek Ornaments
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"Each humblest plant, or weed, as we call it, stands there to express some thought or mood of ours; and yet how long it stands in vain!... Beauty and true wealth are always thus cheap and despised."

Beauty Weed Long
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"One revelation has been made to the Indian, another to the white man."

Men White Man Religion
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"In my cheapest moments I am apt to think that it is n't my business to be "seeking the spirit," but as much its business to be seeking me."

Inspirational Life Thinking
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"In the religion of all nations a purity is hinted at, which, I fear, men never attain to."

Men Religion Purity
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"Bribed with a little sunlight and a few prismatic tints, we bless our Maker, and stave off his wrath with hymns."

God Wrath Hymns
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"Really, there is no infidelity, nowadays, so great as that which prays, and keeps the Sabbath, and rebuilds the churches. The sealer of the South Pacific preaches a truer doctrine."

Hypocrisy Infidelity Religion
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"Yet the New Testament treats of man and man's so-called spiritual affairs too exclusively, and is too constantly moral and personal, to alone content me, who am not interested solely in man's religious or moral nature, or in man even."

Bible Spiritual Religious
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"The Iliad represents no creed nor opinion, and we read it with a rare sense of freedom and irresponsibility, as if we trod on native ground, and were autochthones of the soil."

Religion Soil Opinion
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"It is remarkable that almost all speakers and writers feel it to be incumbent on them, sooner or later, to prove or acknowledge the personality of God. Some Earl of Bridgewater, thinking it better late than never, has provided for it in his will. It is a sad mistake."

God Mistake Thinking
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"The poet who walks by moonlight is conscious of a tide in his thought which is to be referred to lunar influence."

Inspirational Moon Poetry
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"A man of fine perceptions is more truly feminine than a merely sentimental woman."

Women Perception Sentimental
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"You have but little more to do than throw up your cap for entertainment these American days.... Farmers' sons will stare by the hour to see a juggler draw ribbons from his throat, though he tells them it is all deception. Surely, men love darkness rather than light."

Truth Son Men
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"Whoever can discern truth has received his commission from a higher source than the chiefest justice in the world who can discernonly law. He finds himself constituted judge of the judge. Strange that it should be necessary to state such simple truths!"

Truth Simple Law
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