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One is not born into the world to do everything but to do something.

Henry David Thoreau

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Henry David Thoreau
Age: 44 †
Born: 1817
Born: July 12
Died: 1862
Died: May 6
Abolitionist
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Ecologist
Environmentalist
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
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Henry D. Thoreau
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Everything
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More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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We are sometimes made aware of a kindness long passed, and realize that there have been times when our friends' thoughts of us were of so pure and lofty a character that they passed over us like the winds of heaven unnoticed when they treated us not as what we were, but as what we aspired to be.
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I turned my face more exclusively than ever to the woods, where I was better known.
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The dinner even is only the parable of a dinner, commonly.
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I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.
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Long as I have lived, and many blasphemers as I have heard and seen, I have never yet heard or witnessed any direct and consciousblasphemy or irreverence but of indirect and habitual, enough. Where is the man who is guilty of direct and personal insolence to Him that made him?
Henry David Thoreau
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You boast of spending a tenth part of your income in charity may be you should spend the nine tenths so, and done with it.
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The best way to correct a mistake is to make it right.
Henry David Thoreau
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I am a happy camper so I guess I’m doing something right. Happiness is like a butterfly the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.
Henry David Thoreau
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No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof.
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It is equally impossible to forget our Friends, and to make them answer to our ideal. When they say farewell, then indeed we beginto keep them company. How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual Friends, that we may go and meet their ideal cousins.
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Yet, for my part, I was never unusually squeamish I could sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish, if it were necessary.
Henry David Thoreau
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Our sadness is not sad, but our cheap joys.
Henry David Thoreau
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Law never made men a whit more just.
Henry David Thoreau
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I silently smiled at my incessant good fortune.
Henry David Thoreau
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The gold-digger is the enemy of the honest laborer, whatever checks and compensations there may be. It is not enough to tell me that you worked hard to get your gold. So does the Devil work hard. The way of transgressors may be hard in many respects.
Henry David Thoreau
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The church is a sort of hospital for men's souls and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies.
Henry David Thoreau
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The pleasure we feel in music springs from the obedience which is in it.
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As a man thinks of himself, so he is.
Henry David Thoreau
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A man will not need to study history to find out what is best for his own culture.
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It makes no odds where a man goes or stays, if he is only about his business.
Henry David Thoreau