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We rarely meet a man who can tell us any news which he has not read in a newspaper, or been told by his neighbor and, for the most part, the only difference between us and our fellow is that he has seen the newspaper, or been out to tea, and we have not.

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
Seen
Neighbor
Read
Fellows
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Meet
Newspaper
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Conformity
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Tea
Difference
Rarely
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Differences
Newspapers

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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We have built for this world a family mansion, and the next a family tomb. The best works of art are the expression of man's struggle to free himself from this condition, but the effect of our art is merely to make this low state comfortable and that higher state to be forgotten.
Henry David Thoreau
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Translate a book a dozen times from one language to another, and what becomes of its style? Most books would be worn out and disappear in this ordeal. The pen which wrote it is soon destroyed, but the poem survives.
Henry David Thoreau
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I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite - only a sense of existence. Well, anything for variety.
Henry David Thoreau
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When one man has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to his understanding, I foresee that all men will at length establish their lives on that basis.
Henry David Thoreau
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So is the English Parliament provincial. Mere country bumpkins, they betray themselves, when any more important question arises for them to settle, the Irish question, for instance,--the English question why did I not say? Their natures are subdued to what they work in. Their good breeding respects only secondary objects.
Henry David Thoreau
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Trade and commerce, if they were not made of Indian rubber, would never manage to bounce over the obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way.
Henry David Thoreau
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It is equally impossible to forget our Friends, and to make them answer to our ideal. When they say farewell, then indeed we beginto keep them company. How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual Friends, that we may go and meet their ideal cousins.
Henry David Thoreau
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In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society.
Henry David Thoreau
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I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks.
Henry David Thoreau
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Poetry is the mysticism of mankind.
Henry David Thoreau
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One may discover a new side to his most intimate friend when for the first time he hears him speak in public. He will be stranger to him as he is more familiar to the audience. The longest intimacy could not foretell how he would behave then
Henry David Thoreau
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There is no remedy for love but to love more.
Henry David Thoreau
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It is remarkable how long men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pond without taking the trouble to sound it.
Henry David Thoreau
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You may rely on it that you have the best of me in my books, and that I am not worth seeing personally, the stuttering, blunderingclod-hopper that I am. Even poetry, you know, is in one sense an infinite brag and exaggeration. Not that I do not stand on all that I have written,--but what am I to the truth I feebly utter?
Henry David Thoreau
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If private men are obliged to perform the offices of government, to protect the weak and dispense justice, then the government becomes only a hired man, or clerk, to perform menial or indifferent services.
Henry David Thoreau
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I make it my business to extract from Nature what ever nutriment she can furnish me.... I milk the sky and the earth.
Henry David Thoreau
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I hear beyond the range of sound, I see beyond the range of sight, New earths and skies and seas around, And in my day the sun doth pale his light.
Henry David Thoreau
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I am amused to see from my window here how busily a man has divided and staked off his domain. God must smile at his puny fences running hither and thither everywhere over the land.
Henry David Thoreau
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I turned my face more exclusively than ever to the woods, where I was better known.
Henry David Thoreau
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The future is too soon the past. So make perseverance your excellence and go confidently in the direction of your dreams.
Henry David Thoreau