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There is always a present and extant life, be it better or worse, which all combine to uphold.

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
Present
Literature
Better
Always
Life
Extant
Uphold
Combine
Worse

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Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!
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I have heard a good many pretend that they are going to die or that they have died, for aught that I know. Nonsense! I'll defy them to do it. They have n't got life enough in them.... Only half a dozen or so have died since the world began.
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Nature is an admirable schoolmistress.
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The pleasures of the intellect are permanent, the pleasures of the heart are transitory.
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The violence of love is as much to be dreaded as that of hate.
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Time is like a handful of sand - the tighter you grasp it, the faster it runs through your fingers.
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It is reasonable that a man should be something worthier at the end of the year than he was at the beginning.
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They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar.
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The man whose horse trots a mile in a minute does not carry the most important messages.
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Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.
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On the whole, Chaucer impresses us as greater than his reputation, and not a little like Homer and Shakespeare, for he would haveheld up his head in their company.
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The earth I tread on is not a dead inert mass. It is a body, has a spirit is organic and fluid to the influence of its spirit and to whatever particle of the spirit is in me.
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I never dreamed of any enormity greater than I have committed. I never knew, and never shall know, a worse man than myself.
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No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer?
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Do not entertain doubts if they are not agreeable to you.
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A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
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Do not despair of life. You have no doubt force enough to overcome your obstacles. Think of the fox prowling through wood and field in a winter night for something to satisfy his hunger. Notwithstanding cold and the hounds and traps, his race survives. I do not believe any of them ever committed suicide.
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We love to hear some men speak, though we hear not what they say the very air they breathe is rich and perfumed, and the sound of their voices falls on the ear like the rustling of leaves or the crackling of the fire. They stand many deep.
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Yet we must try the harder, the less the prospect of success.
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If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are translated?
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