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In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment to toe that line.

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
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Ecologist
Environmentalist
Essayist
Naturalist
Philosopher
Poet
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Time
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Transcendental
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I have seen how the foundations of the world are laid, and I have not the least doubt that it will stand a good while.
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It will always be found that one flourishing institution exists and battens on another mouldering one. The Present itself is parasitic to this extent.
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What an admirable training is science for the more active warfare of life! Indeed, the unchallenged bravery which these studies imply, is far more impressive than the trumpeted valor of the warrior.
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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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It requires a direct dispensation from Heaven to become a walker.
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It must be confessed that horses at present work too exclusively for men, rarely men for horses and the brute degenerates in man's society.
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I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life.
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I bought me a spy-glass some weeks since. I buy but a few things, and those not till long after I begin to want them, so that when I do get them I am prepared to make a perfect use of them and extract their whole sweet.
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How to extract its honey from the flower of the world. That is my everyday business. I am as busy as a bee about it. I ramble over fields on that errand and am never so happy as when I feel myself heavy with honey and wax. I am like a bee searching the livelong day for the sweets of nature.
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If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would ... [be] the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.
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Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.
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Nothing can shock a brave man but dullness.
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If you will not try, you will go to your grave with your song still inside you.
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The youth may build or plant or sail, only let him not be hindered from doing that which he tells me he would like to do.
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Treat your friends for what you know them to be. Regard no surfaces. Consider not what they did, but what they intended.
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It is remarkable that among all the preachers there are so few moral teachers. The prophets are employed in excusing the ways of men.
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I have myself to respect, but to myself I am not amiable but my friend is my amiableness personified.
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In sane moments we regard only the facts, the case that is.
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The bluebird carries the sky on his back.
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Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.
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