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Do not despair of life. You have no doubt force enough to overcome your obstacles. Think of the fox prowling through wood and field in a winter night for something to satisfy his hunger. Notwithstanding cold and the hounds and traps, his race survives. I do not believe any of them ever committed suicide.

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
Life
Force
Survival
Traps
Night
Field
Satisfy
Ever
Despair
Wood
Prowling
Enough
Committed
Overcome
Notwithstanding
Something
Cold
Obstacles
Hounds
Believe
Doubt
Suicide
Survives
Think
Belief
Hunger
Suicidal
Thinking
Race
Winter
Foxes

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Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is a nest egg, by the side of which more will be laid.
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The chief want, in every state that I have been into, was a high and earnest purpose in its inhabitants.
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As I came home through the woods with my string of fish, trailing my pole, it being now quite dark, I caught a glimpse of a woodchuck stealing across my path, and felt a strange thrill of savage delight, and was strongly tempted to seize and devour him raw not that I was hungry then, except for that wildness which he represented.
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What is sour in the house a bracing walk in the woods makes sweet.
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We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.
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It is not so important that many should be good as you, as that there be some absolute goodness somewhere for that will leaven the whole lump.
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But the place which you have selected for your camp, though never so rough and grim, begins at once to have its attractions, and becomes a very centre of civilization to you: Home is home, be it never so homely.
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When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality.
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The higher the mountain on which you stand, the less change in the prospect from year to year, from age to age. Above a certain height there is no change.
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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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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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I am struck by the fact that the more slowly trees grow at first, the sounder they are at the core, and I think that the same is true of human beings.
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If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined...
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We find it difficult to choose our direction because it does not yet exist distinctly in our idea.
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The dry grasses are not dead for me. A beautiful form has as much life at one season as another.
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It is only necessary that man should start a fence that Nature should carry it on and complete it. The farmer cannot plow quite up to the rails or wall which he himself has placed, and hence it often becomes a hedgerow and sometimes a coppice.
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When a man's conscience and the laws clash, it is his conscience that he must follow.
Henry David Thoreau
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In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely as the pursuits of the simpler nations are still the sports of the more artificial.
Henry David Thoreau
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As for the complex ways of living, I love them not, however much I practice them. In as many places as possible, I will get my feet down to the earth.
Henry David Thoreau