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The rich man is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue.

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
Less
Makes
Institution
Money
Sold
Always
Speaking
Men
Institutions
Absolutely
Virtue
Rich

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The forests are held cheap after the white pine has been culled out and the explorers and hunters pray for rain only to clear theatmosphere of smoke.
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I feel as if my life had grown more outward when I can express it.
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I have seen some whose consciences, owing undoubtedly to former indulgence, had grown to be as irritable as spoilt children, and at length gave them no peace. They did not know when to swallow their cud, and their lives of course yielded no milk.
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Do not read the newspapers.
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There is an orientalism in the most restless pioneer, and the farthest west is but the farthest east.
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A strange age of the world this, when empires, kingdoms, and republics come a-begging to a private man's door, and utter their complaints at his elbow! I cannot take up a newspaper but I find that some wretched government or other, hard pushed and on its last legs, is interceding with me, the reader, to vote for it.
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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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Time & Co. are, after all, the only quite honest and trustworthy publishers that we know.
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Some do not walk at all others walk in the highways a few walk across lots.
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And so the seasons went rolling on into summer, as one rambles into higher and higher grass.
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What can be expressed in words can be expressed in life.
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The student who secures his coveted leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisure fruitful.
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Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.
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It is strange to talk of miracles, revelations, inspiration, and the like, as things past, while love remains.
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I thrive best on solitude. If I have had a companion only one day in a week, unless it were one or two I could name, I find that the value of the week to me has been seriously affected. It dissipates my days, and often it takes me another week to get over it.
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Shall a man not have his spring as well as the plants?
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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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To be awake is to be alive.
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I have no designs on society, or nature, or God. I am simply what I am, or I begin to be that. I live in the present. I only remember the past, and anticipate the future. I love to live.
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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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