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Amid a world of noisy, shallow actors it is noble to stand aside and say, 'I will simply be.

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
Stand
Actors
World
Amid
Noisy
Shallow
Aside
Noble
Simply

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I am reminded by my journey how exceedingly new this country still is. You have only to travel for a few days into the interior and back parts even of many of the old States, to come to that very America which the Northmen, and Cabot, and Gosnold, and Smith, and Raleigh visited.
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Dreams are the touchstones of our character.
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Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.
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It required some rudeness to disturb with our boat the mirror-like surface of the water, in which every twig and blade of grass was so faithfully reflected too faithfully indeed for art to imitate, for only Nature may exaggerate herself.
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I have found it a singular luxury to talk across the pond to a companion on the opposite side.
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Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost.
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A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.
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We must have infinite faith in each other.
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Men are probably nearer the essential truth in their superstitions than in their science.
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Justice is sweet and musical but injustice is harsh and discordant.
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A man receives only what he is ready to receive, whether physically or intellectually or morally, as animals conceive at certain seasons their kind only. We hear and apprehend only what we already half know.
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I lose my respect for the man who can make the mystery of sex the subject of a coarse jest, yet when you speak earnestly and seriously on the subject, is silent.
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The ocean is a wilderness reaching round the globe, wilder than a Bengal jungle, and fuller of monsters, washing the very wharves of our cities and the gardens of our sea-side residences.
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I am not responsible for the successful working of the machinery of society.
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Things don't change. We change.
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That grand old poem called Winter
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We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect. [So why not suspect good rather than bad in events, people and life and thereby find it more?]
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We are apt to imagine that this hubbub of Philosophy, Literature, and Religion, which is heard in pulpits, lyceums, and parlors, vibrates through the universe, and is as catholic a sound as the creaking of the earth's axle. But if a man sleeps soundly, he will forget it all between sunset and dawn.
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It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.
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Sometimes we are clarified and calmed healthily, as we never were before in our lives, not by an opiate, but by some unconscious obedience to the all-just laws, so that we become like a still lake of purest crystal and without an effort our depths are revealed to ourselves. . . .
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