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No definition of poetry is adequate unless it be poetry itself. The most accurate analysis by the rarest wisdom is yet insufficient, and the poet will instantly prove it false by setting aside its requisitions. It is indeed all that we do not know.

Henry David Thoreau

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Henry David Thoreau
Age: 44 †
Born: 1817
Born: July 12
Died: 1862
Died: May 6
Abolitionist
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
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Henry D. Thoreau
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We cannot well do without our sins they are the highway of our virtue.
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Despair and postponement are cowardice and defeat. Men were born to succeed, not to fail.
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Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?
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Those who work much do not work hard.
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The repugnance to animal food is not the effect of experience, but is an instinct. It appeared more beautiful to live low and farehard in many respects and though I never did so, I went far enough to please my imagination.
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I think that Nature meant kindly when she made our brothers few. However, my voice is still for peace.
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The journalists think that they cannot say too much in favor of such improvements in husbandry it is a safe theme, like pietybut as for the beauty of one of these model farms, I would as lief see a patent churn and a man turning it. They are, commonly, places merely where somebody is making money, it may be counterfeiting.
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Be resolutely and faithfully what you are be humbly what you aspire to be.
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We bless and curse ourselves.
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How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had a seedtime of character?
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Do not entertain doubts if they are not agreeable to you.
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The ears were made, not for such trivial uses as men are wont to suppose, but to hear celestial sounds.
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The highest condition of art is artlessness.
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If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.
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Do not read the newspapers.
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Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them.
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It seems to me that the god that is commonly worshipped in civilized countries is not at all divine, though he bears a divine name, but is the overwhelming authority and respectability of mankind combined. Men reverence one another, not yet God.
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We must have infinite faith in each other. If we have not, we must never let it leak out that we have not.
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As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind. Some see only clouds there some, prodigies and portents some rarely look up at all their heads, like the brutes,' are directed toward Earth. Some behold there serenity, purity, beauty ineffable. The world runs to see the panorama, when there is a panorama in the sky which few go to see.
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