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In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.

Henry David Thoreau

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Henry David Thoreau
Age: 44 †
Born: 1817
Born: July 12
Died: 1862
Died: May 6
Abolitionist
Author
Autobiographer
Diarist
Ecologist
Environmentalist
Essayist
Naturalist
Philosopher
Poet
Translator
Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Humans
Misunderstanding
Begins
Tragedy
Understood
Silence
Literature
Words
Sad
Human
Intercourse

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What a glorious time they must have in that wilderness, far from mankind and election day!
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I make it my business to extract from Nature what ever nutriment she can furnish me.... I milk the sky and the earth.
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The cart before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful. Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must bestripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living laid for a foundation.
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Some have asked if the stock of men could not be improved,--if they could not be bred as cattle. Let Love be purified, and all therest will follow. A pure love is thus, indeed, the panacea for all the ills of the world.
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The higher the mountain on which you stand, the less change in the prospect from year to year, from age to age. Above a certain height there is no change.
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The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement.
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Literary gentlemen, editors, and critics think that they know how to write, because they have studied grammar and rhetoric but they are egregiously mistaken. The art of composition is as simple as the discharge of a bullet from a rifle, and its masterpieces imply an infinitely greater force behind them.
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Long enough I had heard of irrelevant things now at length I was glad to make acquaintance with the light that dwells in rotten wood. Where is all your knowledge gone to? It evaporates completely, for it has no depth.
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Rescue the drowning and tie your shoestrings.
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Man is an animal who more than any other can adapt himself to all climates and circumstances.
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Everyone must believe in something. I believe I'll go canoeing.
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Is the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man.
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How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual friends, that we might go and meet their ideal cousins.
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Most men cry better than they speak. You get more nurture out of them by pinching than addressing them.
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I never yet knew the sun to be knocked down and rolled through a mud-puddle he comes out honor-bright from behind every storm. Let us then take sides with the sun, seeing we have so much leisure.
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The birds I heard today, which, fortunately, did not come within the scope of my science, sang as freshly as if it had been the first morning of creation.
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The condition-of-England question is a practical one. The condition of England demands a hero, not a poet.
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A true Friendship is as wise as it is tender. The parties to it yield implicitly to the guidance of their love, and know no otherlaw nor kindness.
Henry David Thoreau
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I found that they knew but little of the history of their race, and could be entertained by stories about their ancestors as readily as any way .
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Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.
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