"The botanist should make interest with the bees if he would know when the flowers open and when they close."
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Quote collection
Henry David Thoreau quotes (page 120 of 139)
2.8K quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"To watch this crystal globe just sent from heaven to associate with me. While these clouds and this somber drizzling weather shut all in, we two draw nearer and know one another."
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"A little thought is sexton to all the world."
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"All the past is here, present to be tried; let it approve itself if it can."
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"The best poets, after all, exhibit only a tame and civil side of nature. They have not seen the west side of any mountain."
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"Color, which is the poet's wealth, is so expensive that most take to mere outline sketches and become men of science."
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"We soon get through with Nature. She excites an expectation which she cannot satisfy. The merest child which has rambled into a copsewood dreams of a wildness so wild and strange and inexhaustible as Nature can never show him."
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"Man's moral nature is a riddle which only eternity can solve."
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"Man is but the place where I stand."
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"Those undeserved joys which come uncalled and make us more pleased than grateful are they that sing."
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"The oldest, wisest politician grows not more human so, but is merely a gray wharf rat at last."
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"If however the law is so promulgated that it of necessity makes you an agent of injustices against another, then I say to you ... break the law."
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"Our hymn-books resound with a melodious cursing of God and enduring Him forever."
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"The American has dwindled into an Odd Fellow,-one who may be known by the development of his organ of gregariousness."
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"It is surprising how many great men and women a small house will contain."
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"I think that no experience which I have today comes up to, or is comparable with, the experiences of my boyhood."
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"Surely one may as profitably be soaked in the juices of a swamp for one day as pick his way dry-shod over sand. Cold and damp ? are they not as rich experience as warmth and dryness?"
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"I desire that there be as many different persons in the world as possible; I would have each one be very careful to find out and preserve his own way."
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"Of course it is of no use to direct our steps to the woods, if they do not carry us thither. I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit.... What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?"
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"The squeaking of the pump sounds as necessary as the music of the spheres."
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