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The student who secures his coveted leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisure fruitful.

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
Men
Student
Obtains
Labor
Unprofitable
Necessary
Secures
Students
Systematically
Education
Ignoble
Alone
Fruitful
Experience
Leisure
Shirking
Make
Retirement
Coveted

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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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A traveler who looks at things with an impartial eye may see what the oldest inhabitant has not observed.
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Do not suffer your life to be taken by newspapers.
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Don't spend your time in drilling soldiers, who may turn out hirelings after all, but give to undrilled peasantry a country to fight for.
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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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Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends... Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.
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So easy is it, though many housekeepers doubt it, to establish new and better customs in the place of the old.
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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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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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The kindness I have longest remembered has been of this sort, the sort unsaid so far behind the speaker's lips that almost it already lay in my heart. It did not have far to go to be communicated.
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What we call wildness is a civilization other than our own.
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Some simple dishes recommend themselves to our imaginations as well as palates.
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The works of great poets have never been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them.
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As for the complex ways of living, I love them not, however much I practice them. In as many places as possible, I will get my feet down to the earth.
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I have seen some whose consciences, owing undoubtedly to former indulgence, had grown to be as irritable as spoilt children, and at length gave them no peace. They did not know when to swallow their cud, and their lives of course yielded no milk.
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It is not so important that many should be good as you, as that there be some absolute goodness somewhere for that will leaven the whole lump.
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It is impossible to give a soldier a good education without making him a deserter. His natural foe is the government that drills him.
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The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure.
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There are various, nay, incredible faiths why should we be alarmed at any of them? What man believes, God believes.
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Pray, for what do we move ever but to get rid of our furniture, our exuviæ at last to go from this world to another newly furnished, and leave this to be burned?
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