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If you are chosen town clerk, forsooth, you cannot go to Tierra del Fuego this summer but you may go to the land of infernal fire nevertheless.

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
Cannot
Nevertheless
May
Town
Towns
Chosen
Summer
Forsooth
Duty
Infernal
Land
Clerk
Fire
Clerks

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If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose.
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I see less difference between a city and a swamp than formerly.
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Do not entertain doubts if they are not agreeable to you.
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In the summer we lay up a stock of experiences for the winter, as the squirrel of nuts?something for conversation in winter evenings.
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It is only necessary to behold the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair's breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance ... To perceive freshly, with fresh senses is to be inspired.
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Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.
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It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.
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When I consider how, after sunset, the stars come out gradually in troops from behind the hills and woods, I confess that I could not have contrived a more curious and inspiring sight.
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When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left.
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However mean your life is, meet it and live it do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house.
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I would give all the wealth of the world, and all the deeds of all the heroes, for one true vision.
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I will come to you, my friend, when I no longer need you. Then you will find a palace, not an almshouse.
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I never dreamed of any enormity greater than I have committed. I never knew, and never shall know, a worse man than myself.
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The United States have a coffle of four millions of slaves. They are determined to keep them in this condition and Massachusettsis one of the confederated overseers to prevent their escape.
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I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.
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Bread may not always nourish us but it always does us good, it even takes stiffness out of our joints, and makes us supple and buoyant, when we knew not what ailed us, to recognize any generosity in man or Nature, to share any unmixed and heroic joy.
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By my intimacy with nature I find myself withdrawn from man. My interest in the sun and the moon, in the morning and the evening, compels me to solitude.
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I cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts in they are commonly ruled for dollars and cents.
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The bluebird carries the sky on his back.
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How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual friends, that we might go and meet their ideal cousins.
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