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The mission of men there seems to be, like so many busy demons, to drive the forest all out of the country, from every solitary beaver swamp and mountain-side, as soon as possible.

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
Men
Soon
Solitary
Like
Side
Demon
Sides
Mission
Beaver
Possible
Missions
Beavers
Seems
Forests
Swamp
Country
Drive
Swamps
Many
Busy
Demons
Every
Mountain
Forest

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For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it (life), whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to 'glorify God and enjoy him forever.'
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Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are.
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It has been so written, for the most part, that the times it describes are with remarkable propriety called dark ages. They are dark, as one has observed, because we are so in the dark about them.
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Every day a new picture is painted and framed, held up for half an hour, in such lights as the Great Artist chooses, and then withdrawn, and the curtain falls. And then the sun goes down, and long the afterglow gives light.
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As for the tenets of the Brahmans, we are not so much concerned to know what doctrines they held, as that they were held by any. We can tolerate all philosophies.... It is the attitude of these men, more than any communication which they make, that attracts us.
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On the whole, Chaucer impresses us as greater than his reputation, and not a little like Homer and Shakespeare, for he would haveheld up his head in their company.
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It is one of the signs of the times. We confess that we have risen from reading this book with enlarged ideas, and grander conceptions of our duties in this world. It did expand us a little.
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I begin to see an object when I cease to understand it.
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It requires a direct dispensation from Heaven to become a walker.
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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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I am reminded by my journey how exceedingly new this country still is. You have only to travel for a few days into the interior and back parts even of many of the old States, to come to that very America which the Northmen, and Cabot, and Gosnold, and Smith, and Raleigh visited.
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If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would ... [be] the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.
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I live in the angle of a leaden wall, into whose composition was poured a little alloy of bell-metal. Often, in the repose of my mid-day, there reaches my ears a confused tintinnabulum from without. It is the noise of my contemporaries.
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The walls that fence our fields, as well as modern Rome, and not less the Parthenon itself, are all built of ruins.
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To live a better life,--this surely can be done.
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Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion.
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Men reverence one another, not yet God.
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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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It is pitiful when a man bears a name for convenience merely, who has earned neither name nor fame.
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Everyone must believe in something. I believe I'll go canoeing.
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