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To inherit property is not to be born - it is to be still-born, rather.

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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Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Still
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Inheritance
Educational
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Rather
Born
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If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth
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Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. She exists for no other end. Do not resist. With the least inclination to be well, we should not be sick.
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Things don't change. We change.
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Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures.
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There is a slumbering subterranean fire in nature which never goes out, and which no cold can chill.
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I am a good horse to travel, but not from choice a roadster. The landscape-painter uses the figures of men to mark a road. He would not make that use of my figure.
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The golden mean in ethics, as in physics, is the centre of the system and that about which all revolve, and though to a distant and plodding planet it be an uttermost extreme, yet one day, when that planet's year is completed, it will be found to be central.
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Such a man has some right to fish, and I love to see nature carried out in him.
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I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute Freedom and Wildness, as contrasted with a Freedom and Culture merely civil, - to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society.
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A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure.
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I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.
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How earthy old people become --moldy as the grave! Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no foretaste of immortality in it. They remind me of earthworms and mole crickets.
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The most interesting thing which I heard of, in this township of Hull, was an unfailing spring, whose locality was pointed out tome on the side of a distant hill, as I was panting along the shore, though I did not visit it. Perhaps, if I should go through Rome, it would be some spring on the Capitoline Hill I should remember the longest.
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To the man who cherishes a secret in his breast, there is a still greater secret unexplored. Our most indifferent acts may be a matter for secrecy, but whatever we do with the utmost truthfulness and integrity, by virtue of its pureness, must be transparent as light.
Henry David Thoreau
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It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear.
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A person who chooses to die or to risk death demonstrates that there are values, principles, maxims, that are more valuable to him than is life itself. In short, he places his immortal self above his mortal self. Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.
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If it is the result of a pure love, there can be nothing sensual in marriage. Chastity is something positive, not negative. It isthe virtue of the married especially. All lusts or base pleasures must give place to loftier delights. They who meet as superior beings cannot perform the deeds of inferior ones.
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Your religion is where your love is.
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Yet, for my part, I was never unusually squeamish I could sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish, if it were necessary.
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Every poet has trembled on the verge of science.
Henry David Thoreau