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No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer?

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
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Admirable
Forever
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Students
Routine
History
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Always
Growth
Necessity
Supersede
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Philosophy
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Seer
Seen
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Seers
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Merely
Alert

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I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.
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Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.
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Heaven is not one of your fertile Ohio bottoms, you may depend on it.
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In some countries a hunting parson is no uncommon sight. Such a one might make a good shepherd's dog, but is far from being the Good Shepherd.
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A hero's love is as delicate as a maiden's.
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The sea-shore is a sort of neutral ground, a most advantageous point from which to contemplate the world....There is naked Nature, inhumanly sincere, wasting no thought on man, nibbling at the cliffy shore where gulls wheel amid the spray.
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I love nature, I love the landscape, because it is so sincere. It never cheats me. It never jests. It is cheerfully, musically earnest. I lie and relie on the earth.
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Only nature has a right to grieve perpetually, for she only is innocent. Soon the ice will melt, and the blackbirds sing along the river which he frequented, as pleasantly as ever. The same everlasting serenity will appear in this face of God, and we will not be sorrowful, if he is not.
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To have made even one person's life a little better, that is to succeed.
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To a small man every greater is an exaggeration.
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The authority of government . . . can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it.
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Man wanted a home, a place for warmth, or comfort, first of physical warmth, then the warmth of the affections.
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Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights.
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All health and success does me good, however far off and withdrawn it may appear all disease and failure helps to make me sad anddoes me evil, however much sympathy it may have with me or I with it.
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A sufficiently great and generous trust could never be abused.
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A man sits as many risks as he runs.
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You must not blame me if I do talk to the clouds.
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I make myself rich by making my wants few.
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The philosopher's conception of things will, above all, be truer than other men's, and his philosophy will subordinate all the circumstances of life. To live like a philosopher is to live, not foolishly, like other men, but wisely and according to universal laws.
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Nature, even when she is scant and thin outwardly, satisfies us still by the assurance of a certain generosity at the roots.
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