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I should consider it a greater success to interest one wise and earnest soul, than a million unwise and frivolous.

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
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Interest
Frivolous
Success
Earnest
Soul
Consider
Million
Millions
Wise
Wisdom
Greater
Unwise

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No man loses ever on a lower level by magnanimity on a higher.
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I have myself to respect, but to myself I am not amiable but my friend is my amiableness personified.
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Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
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The perception of beauty is a moral test.
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My actual life is a fact, in view of which I have no occasion to congratulate myself but for my faith and aspiration I have respect. It is from these that I speak.
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What is human warfare but just this an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.
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Nowadays almost all man's improvements, so called, as the building of houses and the cutting down of the forest and of all large trees, simply deform the landscape, and make it more and more tame and cheap.
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He who is conversant with the supernal powers will not worship these inferior deities of the wind, waves, tide, and sunshine. Butwe would not disparage the importance of such calculations as we have described. They are truths in physics because they are true in ethics.
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A kitten is so flexible that she is almost double the hind parts are equivalent to another kitten with which the fore part plays. She does not discover that her tail belongs to her till you tread upon it.
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For if we take the ages into our account, may there not be a civilization going on among brutes as well as men?
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The mass never comes up to the standard of its best member, but on the contrary degrades itself to a level with the lowest.
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A simple woman down in Tyngsborough, at whose house I once stopped to get a draught of water, when I said, recognizing the bucket, that I had stopped there nine years before for the same purpose, asked if I was not a traveler, supposing that I had been traveling ever since, and had now come round again.
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Indeed, the Englishman's history of New England commences only when it ceases to be New France.
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The question is whether you can bear freedom. At present the vast majority of men, whether white or black, require the discipline of labor which enslaves them for their own good.
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The meeting of two eternities, the past and future....is precisely the present moment.
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The silence sings. It is musical. I remember a night when it was audible. I heard the unspeakable.
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I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.
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I have not earned what I have already enjoyed.
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If rightly made, a boat would be a sort of amphibious animal, a creature of two elements, related by one half its structure to some swift and shapely fish, and by the other to some strong-winged and graceful bird.
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What exercise is to the body, employment is to the mind and morals.
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