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If ever I did a man any goodof course it was something exceptional and insignificant compared with the good or evil which I am constantly doing by being what I am.

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
Ever
Insignificant
Something
Compared
Good
Deeds
Men
Constantly
Morality
Courses
Course
Evil
Exceptional

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There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.
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The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?
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Nature refuses to sympathize with our sorrow. She seems not to have provided for, but by a thousand contrivances against it.
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The most attractive sentences are not perhaps the wisest, but the surest and soundest.
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Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. She exists for no other end. Do not resist. With the least inclination to be well, we should not be sick.
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Every man who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best condition, has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food
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It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.
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I have much to learn of the Indian, nothing of the missionary.
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The student who secures his coveted leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisure fruitful.
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Spring. March fans it, April christens it, and May puts on its jacket and trousers.
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Decay and disease are often beautiful, like the pearly tear of the shellfish and the hectic glow of consumption.
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All men are really most attracted by the beauty of plain speech, and they even write in a florid style in imitation of this. Theyprefer to be misunderstood rather than to come short of its exuberance.
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I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.
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Write while the heat is in you.
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We hate the kindness which we understand.
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I can alter my life by altering my attitude. He who would have nothing to do with thorns must never attempt to gather flowers.
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You never gain something but that you lose something.
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The cart before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful. Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must bestripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living laid for a foundation.
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The highest condition of art is artlessness.
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Men seem anxious to accomplish an orderly retreat through the centuries, earnestly rebuilding the works behind them, as they are battered down by the encroachments of time but while they loiter, they and their works both fall prey to the arch enemy.
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