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Nature has from the first expanded the minute blossoms of the forest only toward the heavens, above men's heads and unobserved bythem. We see only the flowers that are under our feet in the meadows.

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
Flower
Meadows
Toward
Heavens
Minutes
Forest
Feet
Heads
Heaven
Forests
Nature
Observation
Unobserved
Firsts
Flowers
Expanded
First
Minute
Blossoms

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The only people who ever get anyplace interesting are the people who get lost.
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The more you have thought and written on a given theme, the more you can still write. Thought breeds thought. It grows under your hands.
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To forget all about your mistakes adds to them perhaps.
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How meanly and grossly do we deal with nature!
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In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment to toe that line.
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Amid a world of noisy, shallow actors it is noble to stand aside and say, 'I will simply be.
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Every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us.
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One is wise to cultivate the tree that bears fruit in our soul.
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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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Continued traveling is far from productive. It begins with wearing away the soles of the shoes, and making the feet sore, and erelong it will wear a man clean up, after making his heart sore into the bargain. I have observed that the afterlife of those who have traveled much is very pathetic.
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A Friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us.
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We cannot well do without our sins they are the highway of our virtue.
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As for Doing-good, that is one of the professions which are full.
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Instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them.
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I have a great deal of company in my house especially in the morning, when nobody calls.
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If a man believes and expects great things of himself, it makes no odds where you put him, or what you show him . . he will be surrounded by grandeur.
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All misfortune is but a stepping stone to fortune.
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Philosophy, certainly, is some account of truths the fragments and very insignificant parts of which man will practice in this workshop truths infinite and in harmony with infinity, in respect to which the very objects and ends of the so-called practical philosopher will be mere propositions, like the rest.
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Love is the profoundest of secrets. Divulged, even to the beloved, it is no longer Love. As if it were merely I that loved you. When love ceases, then it is divulged.
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How to extract its honey from the flower of the world. That is my everyday business. I am as busy as a bee about it. I ramble over fields on that errand and am never so happy as when I feel myself heavy with honey and wax. I am like a bee searching the livelong day for the sweets of nature.
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