Quote

Left to herself, nature is always more or less civilized, and delights in a certain refinement but where the axe has encroached upon the edge of the forest, the dead and unsightly limbs of the pine, which she had concealed with green banks of verdure, are exposed to sight.

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
Less
Edge
Refinement
Left
Forests
Delights
Edges
Concealed
Nature
Delight
Limbs
Certain
Sight
Banks
Always
Green
Forest
Unsightly
Dead
Exposed
Verdure
Upon
Civilized
Pine

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One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned anything of absolute value by living.
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Man is but the place where I stand.
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It [is of] some advantage to live a primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization, if only to learn what are the gross necessities of life.
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A kitten is so flexible that she is almost double the hind parts are equivalent to another kitten with which the fore part plays. She does not discover that her tail belongs to her till you tread upon it.
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Even the utmost good-will and harmony and practical kindness are not sufficient for Friendship, for Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody. We do not wish for Friends to feed and clothe our bodies-neighbors are kind enough for that-but to do the like office to our spirits.
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We must love our friend so much that she shall be associated with our purest and holiest thoughts alone.
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Perfect sincerity and transparency make a great part of beauty, as in dewdrops, lakes, and diamonds.
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A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book.
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Tough times don't last but tough people do. No matter how slow you go, you are still lapping everybody on the couch. Men are born to succeed, not fail.
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The youth may build or plant or sail, only let him not be hindered from doing that which he tells me he would like to do.
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The boy gathers materials for a temple, and then when he is thirty, concludes to build a woodshed.
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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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While the very inhabitants of New England were thus fabling about the country a hundred miles inland, which was a terra incognitato them,... Champlain, the first Governor of Canada,... had already gone to war against the Iroquois in their forest forts, and penetrated to the Great Lakes and wintered there, before a Pilgrim had heard of New England.
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What we call wildness is a civilization other than our own.
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Associate reverently, and as much as you can, with your loftiest thoughts.
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Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
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In the meanest are all the materials of manhood, only they are not rightly disposed.
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Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps.
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I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both. I love the wild not less than the good.
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All the past is here, present to be tried let it approve itself if it can.
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