Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract o… - Henry David Thoreau

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Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at.

Henry David Thoreau

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About Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau (12 July 1817 – 6 May 1862) was an American essayist, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, and historian. A leading transcendentalist, Thoreau is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay Resistance to Civil Government (also known as Civil Disobedience), an argument for disobedience to an unjust state.

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Birth Name: David Henry Thoreau

Alternative Names: Thoreau • Henry D. Thoreau • Henry Thoreau

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Ralph Waldo Emerson Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Michel de Montaigne Samuel Johnson Robert Louis Stevenson

Additional quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.

Everything that is printed and bound in a book contains some echo at least of the best that is in literature.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are.

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end… - Henry David Thoreau

About Henry David Thoreau

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