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Farmers are respectable and interesting to me in proportion as they are poor.

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
Farming
Respectable
Farmers
Proportion
Poor
Interesting

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Associate reverently, and as much as you can, with your loftiest thoughts.
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We should impart our courage and not our despair.
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I have seen some whose consciences, owing undoubtedly to former indulgence, had grown to be as irritable as spoilt children, and at length gave them no peace. They did not know when to swallow their cud, and their lives of course yielded no milk.
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There is a certain class of unbelievers who sometimes ask me such questions as, if I think that I can live on vegetable food alone and to strike at the root of the matter at once,--for the root is faith,--I am accustomed to answer such, that I can live on board nails. If they cannot understand that, they cannot understand much that I have to say.
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So long as a man is faithful to himself, everything is in his favor, government, society, the very sun, moon, and stars.
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The hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men.
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Go confidently ... Live the life that you imagined.
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Many, no doubt, are well disposed, but sluggish by constitution and habit, and they cannot conceive of a man who is actuated by higher motives than they are. Accordingly they pronounce this man insane, for they know that they could never act as he does, as long as they are themselves.
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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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Let go of the past and live the future . . . Live the life you imagined.
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Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge college is as solitary as a dervis in the desert.
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You speak of poverty and dependence. Who are poor and dependent? Who are rich and independent? When was it that men agreed to respect the appearance and not the reality?
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Many have believed that Walden reached quite through to the other side of the globe.
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A thoroughbred business man cannot enter heartily upon the business of life without first looking into his accounts.
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If you would be chaste, you must be temperate.
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A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of any prince.
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The animal merely makes a bed, which he warms with his body, in a sheltered place but man, having discovered fire, boxes up someair in a spacious apartment, and warms that.... Thus he goes a step or two beyond instinct, and saves a little time for the fine arts.
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Do not lose hold of your dreams or aspirations. For if you do, you may still exist but you have ceased to live.
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As yesterday and the historical ages are past, as the work of today is present, so some flitting perspectives and demi-experiencesof the life that is in nature are in time veritably future, or rather outside of time, perennial, young, divine, in the wind and rain which never die.
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