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By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent.

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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Torrent
Mind
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Good
Consequences
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Actions
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Consequence
Conscious

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Simplicity is the peak of civilization.
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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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The effect of a good government is to make life more valuable of a bad one, to make it less valuable.
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I never was so rapid in my virtue but my vice kept up with me.
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Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds.
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I would not have every man nor every part of a man cultivated, any more than I would have every acre of earth cultivated: part will be tillage, but the greater part will be meadow and forest, not only serving an immediate use, but preparing a mould against a distant future, by the annual decay of the vegetation which it supports.
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Men go back to the mountains, as they go back to sailing ships at sea, because in the mountains and on the sea they must face up.
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At the extreme north, the voyagers are obliged to dance and act plays for employment.
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The most attractive sentences are not perhaps the wisest, but the surest and soundest.
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In wildness is the preservation of the world.
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Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.
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When a man's conscience and the laws clash, it is his conscience that he must follow.
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When a shadow flits across the landscape of the soul where is the substance?
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Wealth can't buy heath, but heath can buy wealth.
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I make it my business to extract from Nature what ever nutriment she can furnish me.... I milk the sky and the earth.
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Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it.
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It is not worth the while to let our imperfections disturb us always.
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Friends will not only live in harmony, but in melody.
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What would we not give for some great poem to read now, which would be in harmony with the scenery,--for if men read aright, methinks they would never read anything but poems. No history nor philosophy can supply their place.
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We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect. [So why not suspect good rather than bad in events, people and life and thereby find it more?]
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