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One can hardly imagine a more healthful employment, or one more favorable to contemplation and the observation of nature.

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
Translator
Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Nature
Healthful
Favorable
Contemplation
Employment
Hardly
Observation
Labor
Imagine

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A sufficiently great and generous trust could never be abused.
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There is something servile in the habit of seeking after a law which we may obey. We may study the laws of matter at and for our convenience, but a successful life knows no law.
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. . . we should be men first, and subjects afterward.
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The boy gathers materials for a temple, and then when he is thirty, concludes to build a woodshed.
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It takes a man of genius to travel in his own country, in his native village to make any progress between his door and his gate.
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It is but too easy to establish another durable and harmonious routine. Immediately all parts of nature consent to it. Only make something to take the place of something, and men will behave as if it was the very thing they wanted.
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Man wanted a home, a place for warmth, or comfort, first of physical warmth, then the warmth of the affections.
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Methinks my own soul must be a bright invisible green.
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This life we live is a strange dream, and I don't believe at all any account men give of it.
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We must love our friend so much that she shall be associated with our purest and holiest thoughts alone.
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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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For the most part, we are not where we are, but in a false position. Through an infirmity of our natures, we suppose a case, and put ourselves into it, and hence are in two cases at the same time, and it is doubly difficult to get out.
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Front yards are not made to walk in, but, at most, through, and you could go in the back way.
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Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage.
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Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping.
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A man can suffocate on courtesy.
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Surely one may as profitably be soaked in the juices of a swamp for one day as pick his way dry-shod over sand. Cold and damp ? are they not as rich experience as warmth and dryness?
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I don't like the city better, the more I see it, but worse. I am ashamed of my eyes that behold it. It is a thousand times meanerthan I could have imagined.... The pigs in the street are the most respectable part of the population.
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A healthy man, indeed, is the complement of the seasons, and in winter, summer is in his heart.
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What would we not give for some great poem to read now, which would be in harmony with the scenery,--for if men read aright, methinks they would never read anything but poems. No history nor philosophy can supply their place.
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