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. . . we should be men first, and subjects afterward.

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
Disobedience
Subjects
Respect
Firsts
First
Men
Afterward

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All endeavour calls for the ability to tramp the last mile, shape the last plan, endure the last hours toil.
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Where there is a lull of truth, an institution springs up. But the truth blows right on over it, nevertheless, and at length blows it down.
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Hate can pardon more than love.
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For a man to act himself, he must be perfectly free otherwise he is in danger of losing all sense of responsibility or of self- respect.
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We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.
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I am grateful for what I have. My thanksgiving is perpetual.
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The savage lives simply through ignorance and idleness or laziness, but the philosopher lives simply through wisdom.
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O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it, for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment.
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Being a teacher is like being in jail once it's on your record, you can never get rid of it.
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I do not know but it is too much to read one newspaper a week. I have tried it recently, and for so long it seems to me that I have not dwelt in my native region. The sun, the clouds, the snow, the trees say not so much to me. You cannot serve two masters.
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We are superior to the joy we experience.
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A book should contain pure discoveries, glimpses of terra firma, though by shipwrecked mariners, and not the art of navigation by those who have never been out of sight of land.
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Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature.
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Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence.
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I always see those of whom I have heard well with a slight disappointment. They are so much better than the great herd, and yet the heavens are not shivered into diamonds over their heads.
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There is a patent office at the seat of government of the universe, whose managers are as much interested in the dispersion of seeds as anybody at Washington can be, and their operations are infinitely more extensive and regular.
Henry David Thoreau
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Resign yourself to the influence of the earth.
Henry David Thoreau
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We seem to think that the earth must go through the ordeal of sheep-pasturage before it is habitable by man.
Henry David Thoreau
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Let us consider under what disadvantages Science has hitherto labored before we pronounce thus confidently on her progress.
Henry David Thoreau
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What is sour in the house a bracing walk in the woods makes sweet.
Henry David Thoreau