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For if we take the ages into our account, may there not be a civilization going on among brutes as well as men?

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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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Men
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Nature
Brutes
May
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Civilization

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Invariably our best nights were those when it rained.
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The condition-of-England question is a practical one. The condition of England demands a hero, not a poet.
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Be not anxious to avoid poverty. In this way the wealth of the universe may be securely invested.
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A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority it is not even a minority then but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.
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It is only necessary to behold the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair's breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance ... To perceive freshly, with fresh senses is to be inspired.
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I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself.
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One who knew how to appropriate the true value of this world would be the poorest man in it. The poor rich man! all he has is whathe has bought.
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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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If there is any hell more unprincipled than our rulers, and we, the ruled, I feel curious to see it.
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Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. Why, nature is but another name for health.
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What means the fact--which is so common, so universal--that some soul that has lost all hope for itself can inspire in another listening soul an infinite confidence in it, even while it is expressing its despair?
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The better part of the man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool's life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before.
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However mean your life is, meet it and live it.
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The great poem must have the stamp of greatness as well as its essence.
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By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent.
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To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it.
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The highest condition of art is artlessness.
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For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly tack and veer and hold the middle of the pond, far from the sportsman... but what beside safety they got by sailing in the middle of Walden I do not know, unless they love its water for the same reason that I do.
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All misfortune is but a stepping stone to fortune.
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I think of no news to tell you. It is a serene summer day here, all above the snow. The hens steal their nests, and I steal theireggs still, as formerly. This is what I do with the hands. Ah, labor,--it is a divine institution, and conversation with many men and hens.
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