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Men do not fail commonly for want of knowledge, but for want of prudence to give wisdom the preference.

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
Giving
Commonly
Men
Prudence
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Failing
Wisdom
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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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To a small man every greater is an exaggeration.
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Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.
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What lies before us and what lies behind us are small matters compared to what lies within us. And when we bring what is within out into the world, miracles happen.
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Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost.
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Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.
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We are ashamed of our fear for we know that a righteous man would not suspect danger nor incur any. Wherever a man feels fear, there is an avenger.
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The ears were made, not for such trivial uses as men are wont to suppose, but to hear celestial sounds.
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In wildness is the preservation of the world.
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Morning brings back the heroic ages.
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I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks.
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We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the filed, but not to describe human character.
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Not secondary to the sun, she gives us his blaze again, Void of its flame, and sheds a softer day... In Heaven queen she is among the spheres She, mistress-like, makes all things to be pure.
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From my experience with wild apples, I can understand that there may be reason for a savage's preferring many kinds of food which the civilized man rejects. The former has the palate of an outdoor man. It takes a savage or wild taste to appreciate a wild fruit.
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Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.
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After all, I believe it is the style of thought entirely, and the style of expression, which makes the difference in books.
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Life is so short that it is not wise to take roundabout ways, nor can we spend much time in waiting.... We have not got half-way to dawn yet.
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By my intimacy with nature I find myself withdrawn from man. My interest in the sun and the moon, in the morning and the evening, compels me to solitude.
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When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.
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Every man casts a shadow not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?
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