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I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.

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
Wrote
Piece
Paper
Pieces
Sleep
Literature
Dark
Pillow
Writing
Determination

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The constant abrasion and decay of our lives makes the soil of our future growth.
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Water is a pioneer which the settler follows, taking advantage of its improvements.
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The Indian...stands free and unconstrained in Nature, is her inhabitant and not her guest, and wears her easily and gracefully. But the civilized man has the habits of the house. His house is a prison.
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The student who secures his coveted leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisure fruitful.
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The boy gathers materials for a temple, and then when he is thirty, concludes to build a woodshed.
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Count your age with friends but not with years.
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It is not when I am going to meet him, but when I am just turning away and leaving him alone, that I discover what God is. I say, God. I am not sure that that is the name. You will know what I mean.
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The universe expects every man to do his duty in his parallel of latitude.
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Wealth can't buy heath, but heath can buy wealth.
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I hardly know an intellectual man, even, who is so broad and truly liberal that you can think aloud in his society.
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Everyone must believe in something. I believe I'll go canoeing.
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I repeat that in this sense the most splendid court in Christendom is provincial, having authority to consult about Transalpine interests only, and not the affairs of Rome. A prætor or proconsul would suffice to settle the questions which absorb the attention of the English Parliament and the American Congress.
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But the divinest poem, or the life of a great man, is the severest satire.... The greater the genius, the keener the edge of the satire.
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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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Our sadness is not sad, but our cheap joys.
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Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is a nest egg, by the side of which more will be laid.
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Life is so short that it is not wise to take roundabout ways, nor can we spend much time in waiting.... We have not got half-way to dawn yet.
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Could slavery suggest a more complete servility than some of these journals exhibit? Is there any dust which their conduct does not lick, and make fouler still with its slime?
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Knowledge does not come to us in details, but in flashes of light from heaven.
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All that is told of the sea has a fabulous sound to an inhabitant of the land and all its products have a certain fabulous quality, as if they belonged to another planet.
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