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Since you are my readers, and I have not been much of a traveler, I will not talk about people a thousand miles off, but come as near home as I can. As the time is short, I will leave out all the flattery, and retain all the criticism.

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
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Ecologist
Environmentalist
Essayist
Naturalist
Philosopher
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
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Henry D. Thoreau
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Retain
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Thousand
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A Friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us.
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So far as my experience goes, travelers generally exaggerate the difficulties of the way. Like most evil, the difficulty is imaginary for what's the hurry?
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For more than five years I maintained myself thus solely by the labour of my hands, and I found, that by working about six weeks in a year, I could meet all the expenses of living.
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We slander the hyena man is the fiercest and cruelest animal.
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Heaven is not one of your fertile Ohio bottoms, you may depend on it.
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Music is the sound of the universal laws promulgated. It is the only assured tone. There are in it such strains as far surpass anyman's faith in the loftiness of his destiny. Things are to be learned which it will be worth the while to learn.
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If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too.
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I was more independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment.
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Beside some philosophers of larger vision, Carlyle stands like an honest, half-despairing boy, grasping at some details only of their world systems.
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There is no remedy for love but to love more.
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However mean your life is, meet it and live it do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are.
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Do not read the newspapers.
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Under the one word house are included the schoolhouse, the almshouse, the jail, the tavern, the dwellinghouse and the meanest shed or cave in which men live contains elements of all these. But nowhere on the earth stands the entire and perfect house.
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If you are chosen town clerk, forsooth, you cannot go to Tierra del Fuego this summer but you may go to the land of infernal fire nevertheless.
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The Great Snow! How cheerful it is to hear of!
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The most attractive sentences are not perhaps the wisest, but the surest and soundest.
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Think for yourself, or others will think for you without thinking of you.
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You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land there is no other life but this.
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There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.
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I have seen how the foundations of the world are laid, and I have not the least doubt that it will stand a good while.
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