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I would say to the readers of the Scriptures, if they wish for a good book, read the Bhagavad-Gita...translated by Charles Wilkins. It deserves to be read with reverence even by yankees...Besides the Bhagvat-Geeta, our Shakespeare seems sometimes youthfully green...Ex oriente lux may still be the motto of scholars, for the Western world has not yet derived from the East all the light it is destined to derive thence.

— Henry David Thoreau Attributed

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More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.

Journals (1838)

Nothing is so much to be feared as fear. Atheism may comparatively be popular with God himself.

Journals (1838)

It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?

It requires more than a day's devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a day.

Life Without Principle (1863)

None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty.

Walden (1854)

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Henry David Thoreau (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.