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I only desire sincere relations with the worthiest of my acquaintance, that they may give me an opportunity once in a year to speak the truth.

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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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Give
Relations
May
Sincere
Giving
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Years
Year
Opportunity
Desire
Worthiest
Speak
Acquaintance
Truth
Sincerity

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As long as there is satire, the poet is, as it were, particeps criminis.
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Despair and postponement are cowardice and defeat. Men were born to succeed, not to fail.
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We hate the kindness which we understand.
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They were pleasant spring days, in which the winter of man's discontent was thawing as well as the earth, and the life that had lain torpid began to stretch itself.
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Friendship takes place between those who have an affinity for one another, and is a perfectly natural and inevitable result. No professions nor advances will avail.... It is a drama in which the parties have no part to act.
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The Library is a wilderness of books.
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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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I found that they knew but little of the history of their race, and could be entertained by stories about their ancestors as readily as any way .
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The hawk is aerial brother of the wave which he sails over and surveys, those his perfect air-inflated wings answering to the elemental unfledged pinions of the sea.
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The experience of every past moment but belies the faith of each present.
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I find it, as ever, very unprofitable to have much to do with men. It is sowing the wind, but not reaping even the whirlwind onlyreaping an unprofitable calm and stagnation. Our conversation is a smooth, and civil, and never-ending speculation merely.
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Life is so short that it is not wise to take roundabout ways, nor can we spend much time in waiting.... We have not got half-way to dawn yet.
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It is an unfortunate discovery certainly, that of a law which binds us where we did not know before that we were bound.
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The great poem must have the stamp of greatness as well as its essence.
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I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life.
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In my short experience of human life, the outward obstacles, if there were any such, have not been living men, but the institutions of the dead.
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Even the utmost good-will and harmony and practical kindness are not sufficient for Friendship, for Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody. We do not wish for Friends to feed and clothe our bodies-neighbors are kind enough for that-but to do the like office to our spirits.
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No man who acts from a sense of duty ever puts the lesser duty above the greater. No man has the desire and the ability to work onhigh things, but he has also the ability to build himself a high staging.
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The great art of life is how to turn the surplus life of the soul into life for the body.
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You must get your living by loving. But as it is said of the merchants that ninety-seven in a hundred fail, so the life of men generally, tried by this standard, is a failure, and bankruptcy may be surely prophesied.
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