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Much verse fails of being poetry because it was not written exactly at the right crisis, though it may have been inconceivably near to it. It is only by a miracle that poetry is written at all. It is not recoverable thought, but a hue caught from a vaster receding thought.

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
Much
Failing
Verses
Poetry
Fails
Written
Near
Though
Miracle
Inconceivably
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Caught
Vaster
Thought
Crisis
Receding
May
Exactly
Hue
Right
Poet
Verse

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Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.
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We are all of us Apollos serving some Admetus.
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Love is no individual's experience and though we are imperfect mediums, it does not partake of our imperfection though we are finite, it is infinite and eternal.
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The best thing a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those schemes which he entertained when he was poor
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Every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us.
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The Indian navigator naturally distinguishes by a name those parts of a stream where he has encountered quick water and forks, andagain, the lakes and smooth water where he can rest his weary arms, since those are the most interesting and more arable parts to him.
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Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.
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A tanned skin is something more than respectable, and perhaps olive is a fitter color than white for a man,--a denizen of the woods. The pale white man! I do not wonder that the African pitied him.
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All men are children, and of one family.
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The still youthful energies of the globe have only to be directed in their proper channel.
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The Oriental philosophy approaches easily loftier themes than the modern aspires to and no wonder if it sometimes prattle about them. It only assigns their due rank respectively to Action and Contemplation, or rather does full justice to the latter. Western philosophers have not conceived of the significance of Contemplation in their sense.
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The truth is, there is money buried everywhere, and you have only to go to work to find it.
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Our own country furnishes antiquities as ancient and durable, and as useful, as any rocks at least as well covered with lichens,and a soil which, if it is virgin, is but virgin mould, the very dust of nature. What if we cannot read Rome or Greece, Etruria or Carthage, or Egypt or Babylon, on these are our cliffs bare?
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Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then.
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The hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men.
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To the sick, indeed, nature is sick, but to the well, a fountain of health.
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I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a multitude? They can only force me who obey a higher law than I.... I do not hear of men being forced to live this way or that by masses of men. What sort of life were that to live?
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Of a life of luxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or commerce, or literature, or art.
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The only way to speak the truth is to speak lovingly.
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What a healthy out-of-door appetite it takes to relish the apple of life, the apple of the world, then!
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