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The most stupendous scenery ceases to be sublime when it becomes distinct, or in other words limited, and the imagination is no longer encouraged to exaggerate it. The actual height and breadth of a mountain or a waterfall are always ridiculously small they are the imagined only that content us.

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
Distinct
Waterfall
Content
Encouraged
Stupendous
Mountain
Sublime
Ridiculously
Longer
Imagined
Waterfalls
Becomes
Height
Exaggerate
Imagination
Actual
Breadth
Small
Limited
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Words
Ceases
Always
Cease

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We do not associate the idea of antiquity with the ocean, nor wonder how it looked a thousand years ago, as we do of the land, for it was equally wild and unfathomable always.
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I do not wish, it happens, to be associated with Massachusetts, either in holding slaves or in conquering Mexico. I am a little better than herself in these respects.
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How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.
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That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.
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When I consider how, after sunset, the stars come out gradually in troops from behind the hills and woods, I confess that I could not have contrived a more curious and inspiring sight.
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Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every shrub and tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit.
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Real power is measured by how much you can let things be.
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Our hymn-books resound with a melodious cursing of God and enduring Him forever.
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No people ever lived by cursing their fathers, however great a curse their fathers might have been to them.
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The church is a sort of hospital for men's souls, and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies. Those who are taken into it live like pensioners in their Retreat or Sailors' Snug Harbor, where you may see a row of religious cripples sitting outside in sunny weather.
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True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.
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One of the most attractive things about the flowers is their beautiful reserve.
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Mathematics should be mixed not only with physics but with ethics.
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I love nature, I love the landscape, because it is so sincere. It never cheats me. It never jests. It is cheerfully, musically earnest. I lie and relie on the earth.
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God reigns when we take a liberal view, when a liberal view is presented to us.
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They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar.
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The virtue of making two blades of grass grow where only one grew before does not begin to be superhuman.
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Nature refuses to sympathize with our sorrow. She seems not to have provided for, but by a thousand contrivances against it.
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