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I never was so rapid in my virtue but my vice kept up with 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
Vice
Vices
Kept
Virtue
Never
Rapid
Rapids

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Most men, it seems to me, do not care for Nature and would sell their share in all her beauty, as long as they may live, for a stated sum - many for a glass of rum. Thank God, men cannot as yet fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth!
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What is religion? That which is never spoken.
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That is a pathetic inquiry among travelers and geographers after the site of ancient Troy. It is not near where they think it is.When a thing is decayed and gone, how indistinct must be the place it occupied!
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It is not for a man to put himself in such an attitude to society, but to maintain himself in whatever attitude he find himself through obedience to the laws of his being, which will never be one of opposition to a just government, if he should chance to meet with such.
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No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes: yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience.
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I only desire sincere relations with the worthiest of my acquaintance, that they may give me an opportunity once in a year to speak the truth.
Henry David Thoreau
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At a certain season of our life we are accustomed to consider every spot as the possible site of a house.
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There is no ill which may not be dissipated, like the dark, if you let in a stronger light upon it.
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I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government
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Follow your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour.
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The only free road, the Underground Railroad, is owned and managed by the Vigilant Committee. They have tunneled under the whole breadth of the land.
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To live a better life,--this surely can be done.
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We should read history as little critically as we consider the landscape, and be more interested by the atmospheric tints and various lights and shades which the intervening spaces create than by its groundwork and composition.
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Continued traveling is far from productive. It begins with wearing away the soles of the shoes, and making the feet sore, and erelong it will wear a man clean up, after making his heart sore into the bargain. I have observed that the afterlife of those who have traveled much is very pathetic.
Henry David Thoreau
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I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.
Henry David Thoreau
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It is a momentous fact that a man may be good, or he may be bad his life may be true, or it may be false it may be either a shame or a glory to him. The good man builds himself up the bad man destroys himself.
Henry David Thoreau
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How many fine thoughts has every man had! How few fine thoughts are expressed!
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Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. She exists for no other end. Do not resist. With the least inclination to be well, we should not be sick.
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Sometimes we are clarified and calmed healthily, as we never were before in our lives, not by an opiate, but by some unconscious obedience to the all-just laws, so that we become like a still lake of purest crystal and without an effort our depths are revealed to ourselves. . . .
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I am no more lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden Pond itself. What company has that lonely lake,I pray?
Henry David Thoreau