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When some of my friends have asked me anxiously about their boys, whether they should let them hunt, I have answered yes-- remembering that it was one of the best parts of my education-- make them hunters.

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
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Education
Hunts
Friends
Hunters
Whether
Remembering
Remember
Answered
Best
Hunting
Make
Parts
Asked
Anxiously
Boys
Hunt

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Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw.
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From exertion come wisdom and purity from sloth ignorance and sensuality.
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As for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.
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It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart it being much more sensitive.
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What fire could ever equal the sunshine of a winter's day?
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I do not know at first what it is that harms me. The men and things of to-day are wont to be fairer and truer in to-morrow's memory.
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It is worth the expense of youthful days and costly hours, if you learn only some words of an ancient language, which are raised out of the trivialness of the street, to be perpetual suggestions and provocations. It is not in vain that the farmer remembers and repeats the few Latin words which he has heard.
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When the reptile is attacked at one mouth of his burrow, he shows himself at another.
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When the first light dawned on the earth, and the birds awoke, and the brave river was heard rippling confidently seaward, and the nimble early rising wind rustled the oak leaves about our tent, all people, having reinforced their bodies and their souls with sleep, and cast aside doubt and fear, were invited to unattempted adventures.
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I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals.
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The strongest wind cannot stagger a Spirit it is a Spirit's breath. A just man's purpose cannot be split on any Grampus or material rock, but itself will split rocks till it succeeds.
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When the State wishes to endow an academy or university, it grants it a tract of forest land: one saw represents an academy, a gang, a university.
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It is remarkable how long men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pond without taking the trouble to sound it.
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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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