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The ears were made, not for such trivial uses as men are wont to suppose, but to hear celestial sounds.

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
Men
Suppose
Sounds
Ears
Loss
Hear
Wont
Sound
Trivial
Use
Celestial
Made
Uses

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For more than five years I maintained myself thus solely by the labour of my hands, and I found, that by working about six weeks in a year, I could meet all the expenses of living.
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The church is a sort of hospital for men's souls, and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies. Those who are taken into it live like pensioners in their Retreat or Sailors' Snug Harbor, where you may see a row of religious cripples sitting outside in sunny weather.
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I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.
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I do not judge men by anything they can do. Their greatest deed is the impression they make on me.
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We must look a long time before we can see
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All health and success does me good, however far off and withdrawn it may appear all disease and failure helps to make me sad anddoes me evil, however much sympathy it may have with me or I with it.
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Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them.
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Your richest veins don't lie nearest the surface.
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Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends... Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.
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I have found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also.
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Talk of mysteries! — Think of our life in nature, — daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it, — rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! The actual world! The common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? Where are we?
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I should be glad if all the meadows on the earth were left in a wild state, if that were the consequence of men's beginning to redeem themselves.
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Long enough I had heard of irrelevant things now at length I was glad to make acquaintance with the light that dwells in rotten wood. Where is all your knowledge gone to? It evaporates completely, for it has no depth.
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Let your condiments be in the condition of your senses.
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I hardly know an intellectual man, even, who is so broad and truly liberal that you can think aloud in his society.
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No people ever lived by cursing their fathers, however great a curse their fathers might have been to them.
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When a man truly commits, the universe will conspire to assure his success.
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The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.
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Simplify, simplify, simplify.
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Every ambitious would-be empire, clarions it abroad that she is conquering the world to bring it peace, security and freedom, and it is sacrificing her sons only for the most noble and humanitarian purposes. That is a lie and it is an ancient lie, yet generations still rise and believe it.
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