Quote

The birds I heard today, which, fortunately, did not come within the scope of my science, sang as freshly as if it had been the first morning of creation.

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
Sang
Science
Scope
Nature
Birds
Today
Bird
Firsts
Creation
Come
Heard
First
Freshly
Morning
Fortunately
Within

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We should endeavor practically in our lives to correct all the defects which our imagination detects.
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The laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day.
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A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
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I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government
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I think of no news to tell you. It is a serene summer day here, all above the snow. The hens steal their nests, and I steal theireggs still, as formerly. This is what I do with the hands. Ah, labor,--it is a divine institution, and conversation with many men and hens.
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He is the rich man, and enjoys the fruit of his riches, who summer and winter forever can find delight in his own thoughts.
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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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As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
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I could lecture on dry oak leaves I could, but who would hear me? If I were to try it on any large audience, I fear it would be no gain to them, and a positive loss to me. I should have behaved rudely toward my rustling friends.
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A Friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us.
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All misfortune is but a stepping stone to fortune.
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You must ascend a mountain to learn your relation to matter, and so to your own body, for it is at home there, though you are not.
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There is a chasm between knowledge and ignorance which the arches of science can never span.
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Show me two villages, one embowered in trees and blazing with all the glories of October, the other a merely trivial and treelesswaste, or with only a single tree or two for suicides, and I shall be sure that in the latter will be found the most starved and bigoted religionists and the most desperate drinkers.
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The Indian navigator naturally distinguishes by a name those parts of a stream where he has encountered quick water and forks, andagain, the lakes and smooth water where he can rest his weary arms, since those are the most interesting and more arable parts to him.
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As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society.
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Books that are books are all that you want, and there are but a half dozen in any thousand.
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I am convinced that if all men were to live as simply as I then did, thieving and robbery would be unknown. These take place only in communities where some have got more than is sufficient while others have not enough.
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