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Improve every opportunity to be melancholy.

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
Every
Melancholy
Improve
Opportunity

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Somehow strangely the vice of men gets well represented and protected but their virtue has none to plead its cause - nor any charter of immunities and rights.
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A man sees only what concerns him.... How much more, then, it requires different intentions of the eye and of the mind to attend to different departments of knowledge! How differently the poet and the naturalist look at objects!
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I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.
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The man who thrusts his manners upon me does as if he were to insist on introducing me to his cabinet of curiosities, when I wished to see himself.
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I wished only to be set down in Canada, and take one honest walk there as I might in Concord woods of an afternoon.
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We should seek to be fellow students with the pupil, and should learn of, as well as with him, if we would be most helpful to him.
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Do not lose hold of your dreams or aspirations. For if you do, you may still exist but you have ceased to live.
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The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening.
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If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intent of doing you good, you should run for your life.
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My Friend is that one whom I can associate with my choicest thought.
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I knew that the wall was the main thing in Quebec, and had cost a great deal of money.... In fact, these are the only remarkable walls we have in North America, though we have a good deal of Virginia fence, it is true.
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In society you will not find health, but in nature. Unless our feet at least stood in the midst of nature, all our faces would bepale and livid. Society is always diseased, and the best is the most so.
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As they say in geology, time never fails, there is always enough of it, so I may say, criticism never fails.
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Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw.
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Show me a man who feels bitterly toward John Brown, and let me hear what noble verse he can repeat. He'll be as dumb as if his lips were stone.
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From exertion come wisdom and purity from sloth ignorance and sensuality.
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You speak of poverty and dependence. Who are poor and dependent? Who are rich and independent? When was it that men agreed to respect the appearance and not the reality?
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Let every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made.
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If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.
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All things in this world must be seen with youthful, hopeful eyes.
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