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We have built for this world a family mansion, and the next a family tomb. The best works of art are the expression of man's struggle to free himself from this condition, but the effect of our art is merely to make this low state comfortable and that higher state to be forgotten.

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
World
Free
Effects
Mansions
Family
Works
Tombs
Next
Comfortable
Condition
Art
Conditions
Lows
States
Expression
Effect
Best
Higher
Forgotten
Make
Struggle
Merely
Mansion
Men
State
Built
Tomb

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Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.
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This bird sees the white man come and the Indian withdraw, but it withdraws not. Its untamed voice is still heard above the tinkling of the forge... It remains to remind us of aboriginal nature.
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The researcher is more memorable than the researched.
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It is desirable that a man be clad so simply that he can lay his hands on himself in the dark, and that he live in all respects so compactly and preparedly, that, if an enemy take the town, he can, like the old philosopher, walk out the gate empty-handed without anxiety.
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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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People seldom hit what they do not aim at.
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I hate the present modes of living and getting a living. Farming and shopkeeping and working at a trade or profession are all odious to me. I should relish getting my living in a simple, primitive fashion.
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Every man must walk to the beat of his own drummer.
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Nature is full of genius, full of divinity.
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I have seen how the foundations of the world are laid, and I have not the least doubt that it will stand a good while.
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The young pines springing up in the corn-fields from year to year are to me a refreshing fact.
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Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buries itself alive.
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A journal is a repository for all those fragmentary ideas and odd scraps of information that might otherwise be lost and which some day might lead to more harmonious compositions.
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Truth never turns to rebuke falsehood her own straightforwardness is the severest correction.
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My facts shall be falsehoods to the common sense. I would so state facts that they shall be significant, shall be myths or mythologic. Facts which the mind perceived, thoughts which the body thought - with these I deal.
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Some simple dishes recommend themselves to our imaginations as well as palates.
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