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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
Diarist
Ecologist
Environmentalist
Essayist
Naturalist
Philosopher
Poet
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Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Time
Thousand
Flattery
People
Leave
Traveler
Since
Readers
Talk
Near
Reading
Miles
Home
Criticism
Come
Reader
Much
Short
Retain

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The constant abrasion and decay of our lives makes the soil of our future growth.
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If the tax-gatherer, or any other public officer, asks me, as one has done, But what shall I do? my answer is, If you really wish to do anything, resign your office. When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished.
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It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws.
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In the wilderness is the salvation of the world.
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Improve every opportunity to be melancholy.
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It is not in vain that man speaks to man. This is the value of literature.
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The only fruit which even much living yields seems to be often only some trivial success,--the ability to do some slight thing better. We make conquest only of husks and shells for the most part,--at least apparently,--but sometimes these are cinnamon and spices, you know.
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Long as I have lived, and many blasphemers as I have heard and seen, I have never yet heard or witnessed any direct and consciousblasphemy or irreverence but of indirect and habitual, enough. Where is the man who is guilty of direct and personal insolence to Him that made him?
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The only free road, the Underground Railroad, is owned and managed by the Vigilant Committee. They have tunneled under the whole breadth of the land.
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The genuine remains of Ossian, or those ancient poems which bear his name, though of less fame and extent, are, in many respects,of the same stamp with the Iliad itself. He asserts the dignity of the bard no less than Homer, and in his era, we hear of no other priest than he.
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What avails it that another loves you, if he does not understand you? Such love is a curse.
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I want the flower and fruit of a man that some fragrance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse.
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Invariably our best nights were those when it rained.
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Those things for which the most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is an important item in the term bill, while for the far more valuable education which he gets by associating with the most cultivated of his contemporaries no charge is made.
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The still youthful energies of the globe have only to be directed in their proper channel.
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A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.
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I have traveled a good deal in Concord and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways.
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I think that Nature meant kindly when she made our brothers few. However, my voice is still for peace.
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In what concerns you much, do not think that you have companions: know that you are alone in the world.
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It is not worth while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar.
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