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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.

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
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Henry D. Thoreau
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Should not every apartment in which man dwells be lofty enough to create some obscurity overhead, where flickering shadows may play at evening about the rafters?
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The mission of men there seems to be, like so many busy demons, to drive the forest all out of the country, from every solitary beaver swamp and mountain-side, as soon as possible.
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Love your life, poor as it is.
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Thank God, they cannot cut down the clouds!
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Wherever a man separates from the multitude, and goes his own way in this mood, there indeed is a fork in the road, though ordinary travelers may see only a gap in the paling. His solitary path across lots will turn out the higher way of the two.
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It is the stars as not yet known to science that I would know, the stars which the lonely traveler knows.
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Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.
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It is one of the signs of the times. We confess that we have risen from reading this book with enlarged ideas, and grander conceptions of our duties in this world. It did expand us a little.
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Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.
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The poet is he who can write some pure mythology today without the aid of posterity.
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Can we not do without the society of our gossip a little while, - have our own thoughts to cheer us?
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I did not go to Boston, for with regard to that place I sympathize with one of my neighbors, an old man, who has not been there since the last war, when he was compelled to go. No, I have a real genius for staying at home.
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How shall we account for our pursuits, if they are original? We get the language with which to describe our various lives out of acommon mint.
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Men talk about Bible miracles because there is no miracle in their lives. Cease to gnaw that crust. There is ripe fruit over your head.
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If the work is high and far, You must not only aim aright, But draw the bow with all your might.
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Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at Nature directly, but only with the side of his eye. He must look through and beyond her.
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Men do not fail commonly for want of knowledge, but for want of prudence to give wisdom the preference.
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Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe.
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Even the facts of science may dust the mind by their dryness, unless they are ... rendered fertile by the dews of fresh and living truth. Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven.
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