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If I were confined to a corner of a garret all my days, like a spider, the world would be just as large to me while I had my thoughts about me.

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
Like
Confined
World
Corner
Corners
Large
Thoughts
Days
Garret
Justice
Spider
Would
Spiders

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What means the fact--which is so common, so universal--that some soul that has lost all hope for itself can inspire in another listening soul an infinite confidence in it, even while it is expressing its despair?
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An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.
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If misery loves company, misery has company enough.
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Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.
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I never yet knew the sun to be knocked down and rolled through a mud-puddle he comes out honor-bright from behind every storm. Let us then take sides with the sun, seeing we have so much leisure.
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How shall we account for our pursuits, if they are original? We get the language with which to describe our various lives out of acommon mint.
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Only nature has a right to grieve perpetually, for she only is innocent. Soon the ice will melt, and the blackbirds sing along the river which he frequented, as pleasantly as ever. The same everlasting serenity will appear in this face of God, and we will not be sorrowful, if he is not.
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When will the world learn that a million men are of no importance compared with one man?
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Much verse fails of being poetry because it was not written exactly at the right crisis, though it may have been inconceivably near to it. It is only by a miracle that poetry is written at all. It is not recoverable thought, but a hue caught from a vaster receding thought.
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The philanthropist too often surrounds mankind with the remembrance of his own cast- off griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy. We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease, and take care that this does not spread by contagion.
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Certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a moment's comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed.
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The necessity of labor and conversation with many men and things to the scholar is rarely well remembered.
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After all the field of battle possesses many advantages over the drawing-room. There at least is no room for pretension or excessive ceremony, no shaking of hands or rubbing of noses, which make one doubt your sincerity, but hearty as well as hard hand-play. It at least exhibits one of the faces of humanity, the former only a mask.
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The best way to correct a mistake is to make it right.
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At present the globe goes with a shattered constitution in its orbit.... No doubt the simple powers of nature, properly directed by man, would make it healthy and a paradise as the laws of man's own constitution but wait to be obeyed, to restore him to health and happiness.
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I do not speak to those who are well employed, in whatever circumstances, and they know whether they are well employed or not but mainly to the mass of men who are discontented, and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they might improve them.
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How many things are now at loose ends! Who knows which way the wind will blow tomorrow?
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If the work is high and far, You must not only aim aright, But draw the bow with all your might.
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It is equally impossible to forget our Friends, and to make them answer to our ideal. When they say farewell, then indeed we beginto keep them company. How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual Friends, that we may go and meet their ideal cousins.
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Amid a world of noisy, shallow actors it is noble to stand aside and say, 'I will simply be.
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