Henry David Thoreau

United States
12 Jul 1817 // 6 May 1862
Writer / Author / Poet

Quotes

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However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the lay, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned
Poverty - it is life near the bone, where it is sweetest
A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure
If misery loves company, misery has company enough
A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book
If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself
So high as a tree aspires to grow, so high will it find an atmosphere suited to it
You never gain something but that you lose something
Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve
Our truest life is when we are in our dreams awake
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