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Nature is not made after such a fashion as we would have her. We piously exaggerate her wonders, as the scenery around our home.

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
Would
Wonders
Observation
Fashion
Wonder
Nature
Piously
Around
Exaggerate
Home
Scenery
Made
Exaggeration

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Work your vein till it is exhausted, or conducts you to a broader one.
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I was awakened at midnight by some heavy, low-flying bird, probably a loon, flapping by close over my head, along the shore. So, turning the other side of my half-clad body to the fire, I sought slumber again.
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The perception of beauty is a moral test.
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For things to change, we must change.
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Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have. ... Shall we always study to obtain more, and not sometimes be content with less?
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The only government that I recognize--and it matters not how few are at the head of it, or how small its army--is that power thatestablishes justice in the land, never that which establishes injustice.
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By what a delicate and far-stretched contribution every island is made! What an enterprise of nature thus to lay the foundations of and to build up the future continent, of golden and silver sands and the ruins of forests, with ant-like industry.
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The outward is only the outside of that which is within. Men are not concealed under habits, but are revealed by them they are their true clothes.
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Impulse is, after all, the best linguist its logic, if not conformable to Aristotle, cannot fail to be most convincing.
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Hate can pardon more than love.
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Our sadness is not sad, but our cheap joys.
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We admire Chaucer for his sturdy English wit.... But though it is full of good sense and humanity, it is not transcendent poetry.For picturesque description of persons it is, perhaps, without a parallel in English poetry yet it is essentially humorous, as the loftiest genius never is.
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I begin to see an object when I cease to understand it.
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Whatever we leave to God, God does and blesses us.
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When the State wishes to endow an academy or university, it grants it a tract of forest land: one saw represents an academy, a gang, a university.
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Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house.
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Where is the unexplored land but in our own untried enterprises? To an adventurous spirit any place--London, New York, Worcester, or his own yard--is unexplored land, to seek which Frémont and Kane travel so far. To a sluggish and defeated spirit even the Great Basin and the Polaris are trivial places.
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The sail, the play of its pulse so like our own lives: so thin and yet so full of life, so noiseless when it labors hardest, so noisy and impatient when least effective.
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