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There may be something petty in a refined taste it easily degenerates into effeminacy. It does not consider the broadest use. It is not content with simple good and bad, and so is fastidious and curious or nice only.

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
Simple
Refined
Use
Petty
Doe
Curious
May
Content
Something
Easily
Effeminacy
Good
Consider
Broadest
Taste
Fastidious
Nice
Degenerates

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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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One man lies in his words, and gets a bad reputation another in his manners, and enjoys a good one.
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If one listens to the faintest but constant suggestions of his genius, which are certainly true, he sees not to what extremes, or even insanity, it may lead him and yet that way, as he grows more resolute and faithful, his road lies.
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If you will not try, you will go to your grave with your song still inside you.
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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day a new picture is painted and framed, held up for half an hour, in such lights as the Great Artist chooses, and then withdrawn, and the curtain falls.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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I saw deep in the eyes of the animals the human soul look out upon me. I saw where it was born deep down under feathers and fur, or condemned for a while to roam four-footed among the brambles,I caught the clinging mute glance of the prisoner and swore that I would be faithful.
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Even the best things are not equal to their fame.
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The Great Snow! How cheerful it is to hear of!
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What is sour in the house a bracing walk in the woods makes sweet.
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Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures.
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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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Men go to a fire for entertainment. When I see how eagerly men will run to a fire, whether in warm or in cold weather, by day or by night, dragging an engine at their heels, I'm astonished to perceive how good a purpose the level of excitement is made to serve.
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The dinner even is only the parable of a dinner, commonly.
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Left to herself, nature is always more or less civilized, and delights in a certain refinement but where the axe has encroached upon the edge of the forest, the dead and unsightly limbs of the pine, which she had concealed with green banks of verdure, are exposed to sight.
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The only way to speak the truth is to speak lovingly.
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You must get your living by loving, or at least half your life is a failure.
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If you're familiar with a principle you don't have to be familiar with all of its applications.
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Men are probably nearer the essential truth in their superstitions than in their science.
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My life has been the poem I would have writ, But I could not both live and utter it.
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A man sees only what concerns him.... How much more, then, it requires different intentions of the eye and of the mind to attend to different departments of knowledge! How differently the poet and the naturalist look at objects!
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