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For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it (life), whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to 'glorify God and enjoy him forever.'

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
Strange
Concluded
Forever
Glorify
Whether
Somewhat
Enjoy
Chief
Ends
Chiefs
Men
Appears
Life
Uncertainty
Devil
Hastily

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The most alive is the wildest.
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It is not so important that many should be good as you, as that there be some absolute goodness somewhere for that will leaven the whole lump.
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One is not born into the world to do everything but to do something.
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Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man.
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All the past is here, present to be tried let it approve itself if it can.
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Every man will be a poet if he can otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the poet.
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It is only necessary that man should start a fence that Nature should carry it on and complete it. The farmer cannot plow quite up to the rails or wall which he himself has placed, and hence it often becomes a hedgerow and sometimes a coppice.
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Literary gentlemen, editors, and critics think that they know how to write, because they have studied grammar and rhetoric but they are egregiously mistaken. The art of composition is as simple as the discharge of a bullet from a rifle, and its masterpieces imply an infinitely greater force behind them.
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Do what nobody else can do for you. Omit to do anything else.
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All things in this world must be seen with youthful, hopeful eyes.
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To the man who cherishes a secret in his breast, there is a still greater secret unexplored. Our most indifferent acts may be a matter for secrecy, but whatever we do with the utmost truthfulness and integrity, by virtue of its pureness, must be transparent as light.
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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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The more you have thought and written on a given theme, the more you can still write. Thought breeds thought. It grows under your hands.
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The virtues of a superior man are like the wind the virtues of a common man are like the grass the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends.
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This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! I am awaked almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. It interrupts my dreams. There is no sabbath. It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work.
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We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.
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The Ethiopian cannot change his skin nor the leopard his spots.
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The pleasures of the intellect are permanent, the pleasures of the heart are transitory.
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There is no history of how bad became better.
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He may travel who can subsist on the wild fruits and game of the most cultivated country.
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