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If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself. Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

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
Years
Fame
Love
Year
Rather
Understand
Money
Truth
Give
Explain
Giving
Six

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The child should have the advantage of ignorance as well as of knowledge, and is fortunate if he gets his share of neglect and exposure.
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There are continents and seas in the moral world, to which every man is an isthmus or inlet, yet unexplored by him.
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The bluebird carries the sky on his back.
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Sincerity is a great but rare virtue, and we pardon to it much complaining, and the betrayal of many weaknesses.
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I am a citizen of the world first, and of this country at a later and more convenient hour.
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For eighteen hundred years, though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of legislation?
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The incessant anxiety and strain of some is a well-nigh incurable form of disease. We are made to exaggerate the importance of what we do and yet how much is not done by us!
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But what is quackery? It is commonly an attempt to cure the diseases of a man by addressing his body alone. There is need of a physician who shall minister to both soul and body at once, that is, to man. Now he falls between two stools.
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To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it.
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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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What fire could ever equal the sunshine of a winter's day?
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Nature has no human inhabitant who appreciates her.
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I repeat that in this sense the most splendid court in Christendom is provincial, having authority to consult about Transalpine interests only, and not the affairs of Rome. A prætor or proconsul would suffice to settle the questions which absorb the attention of the English Parliament and the American Congress.
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The Indian...stands free and unconstrained in Nature, is her inhabitant and not her guest, and wears her easily and gracefully. But the civilized man has the habits of the house. His house is a prison.
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The Mississippi, the Ganges, and the Nile,... the Rocky Mountains, the Himmaleh, and Mountains of the Moon, have a kind of personal importance in the annals of the world.
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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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That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest.
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I am struck by the fact that the more slowly trees grow at first, the sounder they are at the core, and I think that the same is true of human beings.
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We saw one school-house in our walk, and listened to the sounds which issued from it but it appeared like a place where the process, not of enlightening, but of obfuscating the mind was going on, and the pupils received only so much light as could penetrate the shadow of the Catholic church.
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