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The books for young people say a great deal about the selection of Friends it is because they really have nothing to say about Friends. They mean associates and confidants merely.

Henry David Thoreau

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Henry David Thoreau
Age: 44 †
Born: 1817
Born: July 12
Died: 1862
Died: May 6
Abolitionist
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Environmentalist
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
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Henry D. Thoreau
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As a preacher, I should be prompted to tell men, not so much how to get their wheat bread cheaper, as of the bread of life compared with which that is bran. Let a man only taste these loaves, and he becomes a skillful economist at once.
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To the sick, indeed, nature is sick, but to the well, a fountain of health.
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I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.
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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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It requires a direct dispensation from Heaven to become a walker.
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If we cannot sing of faith and triumph, we will sing our despair. We will be that kind of bird. There are day owls, and there arenight owls, and each is beautiful and even musical while about its business.
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The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindu, Persian, and Greek, were a class than which none has been poorer in outward riches, none so rich inward.
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Nations are possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave. What if equal pains were taken to smooth and polish their manners?
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In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify.
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Every man will be a poet if he can otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the poet.
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If we were left solely to the wordy wit of legislators in Congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonal experience and the effectual complaints of the people, America would not long retain her rank among the nations.
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Time & Co. are, after all, the only quite honest and trustworthy publishers that we know.
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If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.
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While the very inhabitants of New England were thus fabling about the country a hundred miles inland, which was a terra incognitato them,... Champlain, the first Governor of Canada,... had already gone to war against the Iroquois in their forest forts, and penetrated to the Great Lakes and wintered there, before a Pilgrim had heard of New England.
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It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.
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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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All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy.
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I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.
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I should consider it a greater success to interest one wise and earnest soul, than a million unwise and frivolous.
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We must have infinite faith in each other.
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