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I perceive that we inhabitants of New England live this mean life that we do because our vision does not penetrate the surface ofthings. We think that that is which appears to be.

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
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Think
Appearance
Thinking
Surface
Life
Perception
England
Vision
Inhabitants
Doe
Penetrate
Live
Appears
Mean
Perceive

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A man of fine perceptions is more truly feminine than a merely sentimental woman.
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I was awakened at midnight by some heavy, low-flying bird, probably a loon, flapping by close over my head, along the shore. So, turning the other side of my half-clad body to the fire, I sought slumber again.
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Methinks I am never quite committed, never wholly the creature of my moods, but always to some extent their critic. My only integral experience is in my vision. I see, perchance, with more integrity than I feel.
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Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge college is as solitary as a dervis in the desert.
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My greatest skill has been to want but little.
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It would be worth the while if in each town there were a committee appointed to see that the beauty of the town received no detriment. If we have the largest boulder in the county, then it should not belong to an individual, nor be made into door-steps.
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As for doing good that is one of the professions which is full. Moreover I have tried it fairly and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution.
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Nature is goodness crystallized.
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A man receives only what he is ready to receive... The phenomenon or fact that cannot in any wise be linked with the rest of what he has observed, he does not observe.
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Invariably our best nights were those when it rained.
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The earth I tread on is not a dead inert mass. It is a body, has a spirit is organic and fluid to the influence of its spirit and to whatever particle of the spirit is in me.
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Even the utmost good-will and harmony and practical kindness are not sufficient for Friendship, for Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody. We do not wish for Friends to feed and clothe our bodies-neighbors are kind enough for that-but to do the like office to our spirits.
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Verily, chemistry is not a splitting of hairs when you have got half a dozen raw Irishmen in the laboratory.
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I am convinced that if all men were to live as simply as I then did, thieving and robbery would be unknown. These take place only in communities where some have got more than is sufficient while others have not enough.
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WE begin to die not in our sense or extremities, but in our divine faculties.
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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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What a glorious time they must have in that wilderness, far from mankind and election day!
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That grand old poem called Winter
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Simplify, simplify, simplify.
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While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.
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