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To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.

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
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Done
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Idleness
Idle
Truly
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Money
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There is a chasm between knowledge and ignorance which the arches of science can never span.
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I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a multitude? They can only force me who obey a higher law than I.... I do not hear of men being forced to live this way or that by masses of men. What sort of life were that to live?
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I knew that the wall was the main thing in Quebec, and had cost a great deal of money.... In fact, these are the only remarkable walls we have in North America, though we have a good deal of Virginia fence, it is true.
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However mean your life is, meet it and live it.
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Far travel, very far travel, or travail, comes near to the worth of staying at home.
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While the Republic has already acquired a history world-wide, America is still unsettled and unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we live only on the shores of a continent even yet, and hardly know where the rivers come from which float our navy.
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Beside some philosophers of larger vision, Carlyle stands like an honest, half-despairing boy, grasping at some details only of their world systems.
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Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent.
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I fear chiefly lest my expression may not be extravagant enough, may not wander far enough beyond the narrow limit of my daily experience, so as to be adequate to the truth of which I have been convinced.
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If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself.
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Be resolutely and faithfully what you are be humbly what you aspire to be.
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There is no just and serene criticism as yet.
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When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable.
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Our sadness is not sad, but our cheap joys.
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The discoveries which we make abroad are special and particular those which we make at home are general and significant. The further off, the nearer the surface. The nearer home, the deeper.
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Heaven might be defined as the place which men avoid.
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It behooves every man to see that his influence is on the side of justice, and let the courts make their own characters.
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No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof.
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If rightly made, a boat would be a sort of amphibious animal, a creature of two elements, related by one half its structure to some swift and shapely fish, and by the other to some strong-winged and graceful bird.
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I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite - only a sense of existence. Well, anything for variety.
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