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When you knock, ask to see God — none of the servants.

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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Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Servant
God
None
Asks
Servants
Knock

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All that are printed and bound are not books they do not necessarily belong to letters, but are oftener to be ranked with the other luxuries and appendages of civilized life. Base wares are palmed off under a thousand disguises.
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Spring-an experience in immortality.
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The only fruit which even much living yields seems to be often only some trivial success,--the ability to do some slight thing better. We make conquest only of husks and shells for the most part,--at least apparently,--but sometimes these are cinnamon and spices, you know.
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The culture of the hop ... so analagous to the culture and uses of the grape, may afford a theme for future poets.
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Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice.
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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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Commonly men will only be brave as their fathers were brave, or timid.
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How can any man be weak who dares to be at all?
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Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve.
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All good things are cheap: all bad are very dear.
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Nature is an admirable schoolmistress.
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There are none happy in the world but beings who enjoy freely a vast horizon.
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What an admirable training is science for the more active warfare of life! Indeed, the unchallenged bravery which these studies imply, is far more impressive than the trumpeted valor of the warrior.
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There are some things which a man never speaks of, which are much finer kept silent about. To the highest communications we only lend a silent ear.
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It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?
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I should say that the useful results of science had accumulated, but that there had been no accumulation of knowledge, strictly speaking, for posterity for knowledge is to be acquired only by a corresponding experience. How can we know what we are told merely? Each man can interpret another's experience only by his own.
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Hate can pardon more than love.
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As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society.
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When I would go a-visiting, I find that I go off the fashionable street,--not being inclined to change my dress,--to where man meets man, and not polished shoe meets shoe.
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