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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
Combine
Worse
Present
Literature
Better
Always
Life
Extant
Uphold

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The mass never comes up to the standard of its best member, but on the contrary degrades itself to a level with the lowest.
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All expression of truth does at length take this deep ethical form.
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It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.
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There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature and has his senses still.
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If you are chosen town clerk, forsooth, you cannot go to Tierra del Fuego this summer but you may go to the land of infernal fire nevertheless.
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From exertion come wisdom and purity from sloth ignorance and sensuality.
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If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth
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Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.
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Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?
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Friends are made for caring and sharing. Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody.
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My life has been the poem I would have writ, But I could not both live and utter it.
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I mean that they (students) should not play life, or study it merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning to end. How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living? Methinks this would exercise their minds as much as mathematics.
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A man sits as many risks as he runs.
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We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.
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Life is grand, and so are its environments of Past and Future. Would the face of nature be so serene and beautiful if man's destiny were not equally so?
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If we cannot sing of faith and triumph, we will sing our despair. We will be that kind of bird. There are day owls, and there arenight owls, and each is beautiful and even musical while about its business.
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Simplicity is the peak of civilization.
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So easy is it, though many housekeepers doubt it, to establish new and better customs in the place of the old.
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I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.
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You know about a person who deeply interests you more than you can be told. A look, a gesture, an act, which to everybody else is insignificant tells you more about that one than words can.
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