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Henry David Thoreau -
Nature
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No man in America has ever stood up so persistently and effectively for the dignity of human nature, knowing himself for a man, and the equal of any and all governments. In that sense he was the most American of us all.
Henry David Thoreau
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In the planting of the seeds of most trees, the best gardeners do no more than follow Nature, though they may not know it.
Henry David Thoreau
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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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I like sometimes to take rank hold on life and spend my day more as the animals do. Perhaps I have owed to this employment and tohunting, when quite young, my closest acquaintance with Nature. They early introduce us to and detain us in scenery with which otherwise, at that age, we should have little acquaintance.
Henry David Thoreau
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It is but too easy to establish another durable and harmonious routine. Immediately all parts of nature consent to it. Only make something to take the place of something, and men will behave as if it was the very thing they wanted.
Henry David Thoreau
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I make my own time. I make my own terms. I cannot see how God or Nature can ever get the start of me.
Henry David Thoreau
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Blessed are they who never read a newspaper, for they shall see Nature, and through her, God.
Henry David Thoreau
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When I visit again some haunt of my youth, I am glad to find that nature wears so well. The landscape is indeed something real, and solid, and sincere, and I have not put my foot through it yet.
Henry David Thoreau
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All these sounds, the crowing of cocks, the baying of dogs, and the hum of insects at noon, are the evidence of nature's health orsound state.
Henry David Thoreau
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To the sick, indeed, nature is sick, but to the well, a fountain of health.
Henry David Thoreau
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There is in my nature, methinks, a singular yearning toward all wildness.
Henry David Thoreau
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In all her products, Nature only develops her simplest germs. One would say that it was no great stretch of invention to create birds. The hawk which now takes his flight over the top of the wood was at first, perchance, only a leaf which fluttered in its aisles. From rustling leaves she came in the course of ages to the loftier flight and clear carol of the bird.
Henry David Thoreau
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Entomology extends the limits of being in new directions, so that I walk in nature with a sense of greater space and freedom. It suggests, besides, that the universe is not rough-hewn, but perfect in its details.
Henry David Thoreau
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One can hardly imagine a more healthful employment, or one more favorable to contemplation and the observation of nature.
Henry David Thoreau
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I love nature, I love the landscape, because it is so sincere. It never cheats me. It never jests. It is cheerfully, musically earnest. I lie and relie on the earth.
Henry David Thoreau
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The imagination, give it the least license, dives deeper and soars higher than Nature goes.
Henry David Thoreau
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We love to see any redness in the vegetation of the temperate zone. It is the color of colors. This plant speaks to our blood....What a perfect maturity it arrives at! It is the emblem of a successful life concluded by a death not premature, which is an ornament to Nature. What if we were to mature as perfectly, root and branch, glowing in the midst of our decay, like the poke!
Henry David Thoreau
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For the most part, we are not where we are, but in a false position. Through an infirmity of our natures, we suppose a case, and put ourselves into it, and hence are in two cases at the same time, and it is doubly difficult to get out.
Henry David Thoreau
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Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God's property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.
Henry David Thoreau
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By what a delicate and far-stretched contribution every island is made! What an enterprise of nature thus to lay the foundations of and to build up the future continent, of golden and silver sands and the ruins of forests, with ant-like industry.
Henry David Thoreau
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The Indian's intercourse with Nature is at least such as admits of the greatest independence of each.
Henry David Thoreau
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Friendship is the unspeakable joy and blessing that result to two or more individuals who from constitution sympathize. Such natures are liable to no mistakes, but will know each other through thick and thin. Between two by nature alike and fitted to sympathize, there is no veil, and there can be no obstacle. Who are the estranged? Two friends explaining.
Henry David Thoreau
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Quote of the day
Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Henry David Thoreau
Creative Commons
Born:
July 12, 1817
Died:
May 6, 1862
(aged 44)
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