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No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes: yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience.

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
Ever
Anxiety
Men
Conscience
Estimation
Clean
Patch
Clothes
Patches
Least
Commonly
Greater
Fashionable
Sure
Stood
Sound
Lower

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The boy gathers materials for a temple, and then when he is thirty, concludes to build a woodshed.
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Resign yourself to the influence of the earth.
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I sometimes despair of getting anything quite simple and honest done in this world by the help of men. They would have to be passed through a powerful press first, to squeeze their old notions out of them, so that they would not soon get upon their legs again.
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As in many countries precious metals belong to the crown, so here more precious natural objects of rare beauty should belong to the public.
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I never dreamed of any enormity greater than I have committed. I never knew, and never shall know, a worse man than myself.
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Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights.
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Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man.
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Spring-an experience in immortality.
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It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such. It is the bog in our brains and bowels, the primitive vigor of Nature in us, that inspires that dream. I shall never find in the wilds of Labrador a greater wildness than in some recess of Concord.
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Nowadays almost all man's improvements, so called, as the building of houses and the cutting down of the forest and of all large trees, simply deform the landscape, and make it more and more tame and cheap.
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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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Wherever there is a channel for water, there is a road for the canoe.
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Let us consider under what disadvantages Science has hitherto labored before we pronounce thus confidently on her progress.
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Hate can pardon more than love.
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We have not so good a right to hate any as our Friend.
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If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment. [Like they say, 'Every cloud has a silver lining'...so if you are patient, expect, anticipate, look and work for some good to come from the cloud, you will be rewarded eventually!]
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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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Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me.
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Simplify your life. Don't waste the years struggling for things that are unimportant. Don't burden yourself with possessions. Keep your needs and wants simple and enjoy what you have. Don't destroy your peace of mind by looking back, worrying about the past. Live in the present. Simplify!
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Fame is not just. She never finely or discriminatingly praises, but coarsely hurrahs.
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