Quote

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail.

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
Simplicity
Nail
Half
Thumbs
Keep
Accounts
Simplify
Three
Million
Nails
Two
Hundred
Dozen
Thousand
Affairs
Instead
Count
Millions
Affair
Thumb
Simple

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If however the law is so promulgated that it of necessity makes you an agent of injustices against another, then I say to you ... break the law.
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The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure.
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God is only the president of the day, and Webster is his orator.
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Water is a pioneer which the settler follows, taking advantage of its improvements.
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Perfect sincerity and transparency make a great part of beauty, as in dewdrops, lakes, and diamonds.
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Talk about slavery! It is not the peculiar institution of the South. It exists wherever men are bought and sold, wherever a man allows himself to be made a mere thing or a tool, and surrenders his inalienable rights of reason and conscience. Indeed, this slavery is more complete than that which enslaves the body alone.
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The civilized man is a more experienced and wiser savage.
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Things don't change. We change.
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If to chaffer and higgle are bad in trade, they are much worse in Love. It demands directness as of an arrow.
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Who looks in the sun will see no light else but also he will see no shadow. Our life revolves unceasingly, but the centre is ever the same, and the wise will regard only the seasons of the soul.
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In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely as the pursuits of the simpler nations are still the sports of the more artificial.
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Be not anxious to avoid poverty. In this way the wealth of the universe may be securely invested.
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I was awakened at midnight by some heavy, low-flying bird, probably a loon, flapping by close over my head, along the shore. So, turning the other side of my half-clad body to the fire, I sought slumber again.
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The violence of love is as much to be dreaded as that of hate.
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A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure.
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Heroes are often the most ordinary of men.
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Our own country furnishes antiquities as ancient and durable, and as useful, as any rocks at least as well covered with lichens,and a soil which, if it is virgin, is but virgin mould, the very dust of nature. What if we cannot read Rome or Greece, Etruria or Carthage, or Egypt or Babylon, on these are our cliffs bare?
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My actual life is a fact, in view of which I have no occasion to congratulate myself but for my faith and aspiration I have respect. It is from these that I speak.
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We seem to think that the earth must go through the ordeal of sheep-pasturage before it is habitable by man.
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Why should not a poet's cat be winged as well as his horse?
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