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All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be.

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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Autobiographer
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Ecologist
Environmentalist
Essayist
Naturalist
Philosopher
Poet
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Something
Men
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We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect. [So why not suspect good rather than bad in events, people and life and thereby find it more?]
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Every poet has trembled on the verge of science.
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Was awakened in the night to a strain of music dying away, - passing travellers singing. My being was so expanded and infinitely and divinely related for a brief season that I saw how unexhausted, how almost wholly unimproved, was man's capacity for a divine life. When I remembered what a narrow and finite life I should anon awake to!
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But what is quackery? It is commonly an attempt to cure the diseases of a man by addressing his body alone. There is need of a physician who shall minister to both soul and body at once, that is, to man. Now he falls between two stools.
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What is sour in the house a bracing walk in the woods makes sweet.
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Continued traveling is far from productive. It begins with wearing away the soles of the shoes, and making the feet sore, and erelong it will wear a man clean up, after making his heart sore into the bargain. I have observed that the afterlife of those who have traveled much is very pathetic.
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I know of no redeeming qualities in myself but a sincere love for some things, and when I am reproved I fall back on to this ground.
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How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?
Henry David Thoreau
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Dissent without action is consent.
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Whose are the truly labored sentences? From the weak and flimsy periods of the politician and literary man, we are glad to turn even to the description of work, the simple record of the month's labor in the farmer's almanac, to restore our tone and spirits.
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Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.
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The vessel, though her masts be firm,Beneath her copper bears a worm.
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I wish to learn what life has to teach, and not, when I come to die, discover that I have not truly lived.
Henry David Thoreau
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Every man is entitled to come to Cattle-Show, even a transcendentalist and for my part I am more interested in the men than in the cattle.
Henry David Thoreau
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I have heard a good many pretend that they are going to die or that they have died, for aught that I know. Nonsense! I'll defy them to do it. They have n't got life enough in them.... Only half a dozen or so have died since the world began.
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One piece of good sense would be more memorable than a monument as high as the moon.
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To speak or do anything that shall concern mankind, one must speak and act as if well, or from that grain of health which he has left.
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I will come to you, my friend, when I no longer need you. Then you will find a palace, not an almshouse.
Henry David Thoreau
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The eye is the jewel of the body.
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I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite - only a sense of existence. Well, anything for variety.
Henry David Thoreau