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The savage lives simply through ignorance and idleness or laziness, but the philosopher lives simply through wisdom.

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
Simplicity
Ignorance
Simply
Wisdom
Savage
Lives
Idleness
Savages
Laziness
Philosopher

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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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You only need sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns.
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All the events which make the annals of the nations are but the shadows of our private experiences.
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That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.
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Wherever a man goes, men will pursue him and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society.
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Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and Spring.
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What can be expressed in words can be expressed in life.
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I make my own time. I make my own terms. I cannot see how God or Nature can ever get the start of me.
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It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.
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There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hand. I love a broad margin to my life.
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Law never made men a whit more just and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.
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The question is not what you look at – but how you look & whether you see.
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Let your walks now be a little more adventurous.
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Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage.
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When my legs begin to move, the thoughts begin to flow.
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The intellect of most men is barren. They neither fertilize or are fertilized. It is the marriage of the soul with nature that makes the intellect fruitful, that gives birth to imagination...without nature-awakened imagination most persons do not really live in the world, they merely pass through it as they live dull lives of quiet desperation.
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I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board.
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Simplicity is the law of Nature for man as well as for flowers. When the tapestry (corolla) of the nuptial bed (calyx) is excessive, luxuriant, it is unproductive. The fertile flowers are single, not double.
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It would seem as if the very language of our parlors would lose all its nerve and degenerate into palaver wholly, our lives pass at such remoteness from its symbols, and its metaphors and tropes are necessarily so far fetched.
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Be resolutely and faithfully what you are be humbly what you aspire to be.
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