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A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars.

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
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Beautiful
Cars
Housekeeping
Book
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Margin
Men
Waste
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Time
Hours
Haste
Life
Less
Broads
Universe
Broad
Makes
Observe
Keep
Leisure

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Many old people receive pensions for no other reason, it seems to me, but as a compensation for having lived a long time ago.
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The cost of a thing is something called life which is given in exchange for it.
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The kind uncles and aunts of the race are more esteemed than its true spiritual fathers and mothers.
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Duty is one and invariable it requires no impossibilities, nor can it ever be disregarded with impunity.
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There is absolutely no common sense, it is common non-sense.
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I should say that the useful results of science had accumulated, but that there had been no accumulation of knowledge, strictly speaking, for posterity for knowledge is to be acquired only by a corresponding experience. How can we know what we are told merely? Each man can interpret another's experience only by his own.
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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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The echo is, to some extent, an original sound, and therein is the magic and charm of it. It is not merely a repetition of what was worth repeating in the bell, but partly the voice of the wood the same trivial words and notes sung by a wood-nymph.
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It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.
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Comparatively, we can excuse any offense against the heart, but not against the imagination. The imagination knows--nothing escapes its glance from out its eyry--and it controls the breast.
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At least let us have healthy books.
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We need only travel enough to give our intellects an airing.
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Here or nowhere is our heaven.
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O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it, for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment.
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All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.
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Perfect alchemists I keep who can transmute substances without end, and thus the corner of my garden is an inexhaustible treasure-chest. Here you can dig, not gold, but the value which gold merely represents and there is no Signor Blitz about it.
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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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One is not born into the world to do everything but to do something.
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