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My neighbors tell me of their adventures with famous gentlemen and ladies, what notabilities they met at the dinner-table but I am no more interested in such things than in the contents of the Daily Times. The interest and the conversation are about costume and manners chiefly but a goose is a goose still, dress it as you will.

Henry David Thoreau

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Henry David Thoreau
Age: 44 †
Born: 1817
Born: July 12
Died: 1862
Died: May 6
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
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Sometimes we are clarified and calmed healthily, as we never were before in our lives, not by an opiate, but by some unconscious obedience to the all-just laws, so that we become like a still lake of purest crystal and without an effort our depths are revealed to ourselves. . . .
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It makes no odds where a man goes or stays, if he is only about his business.
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If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too.
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The world rests on principles.
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The world is a strange place for a playhouse to stand within it.
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From exertion come wisdom and purity from sloth ignorance and sensuality.
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All that man has to say or do that can possibly concern mankind is in some shape or other to tell the story of his love-to sing, and, if he is fortunate and keeps alive, he will be forever in love.
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Oh to reach the point of death and realize one has not lived at all.
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An unclean person is universally a slothful one.
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I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks.
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It is reasonable that a man should be something worthier at the end of the year than he was at the beginning.
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A true Friendship is as wise as it is tender. The parties to it yield implicitly to the guidance of their love, and know no otherlaw nor kindness.
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We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers.
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Today you may write a chapter on the advantages of traveling, and tomorrow you may write another chapter on the advantages of not traveling.
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There are secret articles in our treaties with the gods, of more importance than all the rest, which the historian can never know.
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The student may read Homer or Æschylus in the Greek without danger of dissipation or luxuriousness, for it implies that hein some measure emulate their heroes, and consecrate morning hours to their pages.
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Generally speaking, the political news, whether domestic or foreign, might be written today for the next ten years with sufficientaccuracy. Most revolutions in society have not power to interest, still less alarm us but tell me that our rivers are drying up, or the genus pine dying out in the country, and I might attend.
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If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are translated?
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Between whom there is hearty truth, there is love and in proportion to our truthfulness and confidence in one another, our lives are divine and miraculous, and answer to our ideal. . . . Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody.
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Certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a moment's comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed.
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