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It is remarkable how long men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pond without taking the trouble to sound it.

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
Taking
Trouble
Sound
Without
Long
Believe
Pond
Men
Ponds
Remarkable

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Writing your name can lead to writing sentences. And the next thing you'll be doing is writing paragraphs, and then books. And then you'll be in as much trouble as I am!
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A journal, is a book that shall contain a record of all your joy, your ecstasy, what you are grateful for.
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The sea-shore is a sort of neutral ground, a most advantageous point from which to contemplate the world....There is naked Nature, inhumanly sincere, wasting no thought on man, nibbling at the cliffy shore where gulls wheel amid the spray.
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I do not believe there are eight hundred human beings on the globe.
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Don't spend your time in drilling soldiers, who may turn out hirelings after all, but give to undrilled peasantry a country to fight for.
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Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep.
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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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The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.
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A journal is a repository for all those fragmentary ideas and odd scraps of information that might otherwise be lost and which some day might lead to more harmonious compositions.
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If we live in the Nineteenth Century, why should we not enjoy the advantages which the Nineteenth Century offers? Why should our life be in any respect provincial?
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No doubt another may also think for me but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself.
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Man is an animal who more than any other can adapt himself to all climates and circumstances.
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A tanned skin is something more than respectable, and perhaps olive is a fitter color than white for a man,--a denizen of the woods. The pale white man! I do not wonder that the African pitied him.
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All questions rely on the present for their solution. Time measures nothing but itself. The word that is written may be postponed,but not that on the lip. If this is what the occasion says, let the occasion say it.
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To watch this crystal globe just sent from heaven to associate with me. While these clouds and this somber drizzling weather shut all in, we two draw nearer and know one another.
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Men talk about Bible miracles because there is no miracle in their lives. Cease to gnaw that crust. There is ripe fruit over your head.
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What a fool he must be who thinks that his El Dorado is anywhere but where he lives.
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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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I want the flower and fruit of a man that some fragrance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse.
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