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You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land there is no other life but this.

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
Another
Toward
Mindfulness
Find
Fool
Island
Live
Present
Fools
Look
Stand
Islands
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Land
Opportunities
Must
Moment
Wave
Every
Opportunity
Eternity
Carpe
Life
Moments
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While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.
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A temple, you know, was anciently an open place without a roof, whose walls served merely to shut out the world and direct the mind toward heaven but a modern meeting-house shuts out the heavens, while it crowds the world into still closer quarters.
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All sensuality is one, though it takes many forms all purity is one. It is the same whether a man eat, or drink, or cohabit, or sleep sensually. They are but one appetite, and we only need to see a person do any one of these things to know how great a sensualist he is. The impure can neither stand nor sit with purity.
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Nature has no human inhabitant who appreciates her.
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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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We are all of us Apollos serving some Admetus.
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The doctors are all agreed that I am suffering for want of society. Was never a case like it. First, I did not know that I was suffering at all. Secondly, as an Irishman might say, I had thought it was indigestion of the society I got.
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I have learned that the swiftest traveller is he that goes afoot.
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It seems as if the more youthful and impressible streams can hardly resist the numerous invitations and temptations to leave theirnative beds and run down their neighbors' channels.
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If the work is high and far, You must not only aim aright, But draw the bow with all your might.
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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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One is not born into the world to do everything but to do something.
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As a man grows older, his ability to sit still and follow indoor occupations increases. He grows vespertinal in his habits as theevening of life approaches, till at last he comes forth only just before sundown, and gets all the walk that he requires in half an hour.
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Nature has left nothing to the mercy of man.
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Homeliness is almost as great a merit in a book as in a house, if the reader would abide there. It is next to beauty, and a very high art.
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There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dullness. When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics and shopkeepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all the afternoon too, sitting with crossed legs, so many of them - as if the legs were made to sit upon, and not to stand or walk upon.
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One attraction in coming to the woods to live was that I should have leisure and opportunity to see the spring come in.
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The schools begin with what they call the elements, and where do they end?
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The perception of beauty is a moral test.
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It is impossible to give a soldier a good education without making him a deserter. His natural foe is the government that drills him.
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