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Men go back to the mountains, as they go back to sailing ships at sea, because in the mountains and on the sea they must face up.

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
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
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Henry D. Thoreau
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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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The books for young people say a great deal about the selection of Friends it is because they really have nothing to say about Friends. They mean associates and confidants merely.
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The richest gifts we can bestow are the least marketable. We hate the kindness which we understand.
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The oldest, wisest politician grows not more human so, but is merely a gray wharf rat at last.
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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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But the divinest poem, or the life of a great man, is the severest satire.... The greater the genius, the keener the edge of the satire.
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Many men walk by day few walk by night. It is a different season.
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It is true, we are such poor navigators that our thoughts, for the most part, stand off and on upon a harborless coast, are conversant only with the bights of the bays of poesy, or steer for the public ports of entry, and go into the dry docks of science, where they merely refit for this world, and no natural currents concur to individualize them.
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