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While the Republic has already acquired a history world-wide, America is still unsettled and unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we live only on the shores of a continent even yet, and hardly know where the rivers come from which float our navy.

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
Live
Rivers
Continent
Come
Wide
Floats
Even
English
Acquired
Like
Already
Navy
Unsettled
World
History
Continents
Unexplored
Stills
Shore
Shores
America
Republic
Holland
Still
Hardly
Float

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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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I am grateful for what I have. My thanksgiving is perpetual.
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Then at night the general stillness is more impressive than any sound, but occasionally you hear the note of an owl farther or nearer in the woods, and if near a lake, the semihuman cry of the loons at their unearthly revels.
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As for your high towers and monuments, there was a crazy fellow once in this town who undertook to dig through to China, and he got so far that, as he said, he heard the Chinese pots and kettles rattle but I think that I shall not go out of my way to admire the hole which he made.
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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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I am engaged to Concord and my own private pursuits by 10,000 ties, and it would be suicide to rend them.
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The man who takes the liberty to live is superior to all the laws, by virtue of his relation to the lawmaker.
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The frontiers are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man fronts a fact.
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The poet is no tender slip of fairy stock, who requires peculiar institutions and edicts for his defense, but the toughest son ofearth and of Heaven, and by his greater strength and endurance his fainting companions will recognize the God in him. It is the worshipers of beauty, after all, who have done the real pioneer work of the world.
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I am never rich in money, and I am never meanly poor.
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We are all of us Apollos serving some Admetus.
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Only nature has a right to grieve perpetually, for she only is innocent. Soon the ice will melt, and the blackbirds sing along the river which he frequented, as pleasantly as ever. The same everlasting serenity will appear in this face of God, and we will not be sorrowful, if he is not.
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We should seek to be fellow students with the pupil, and should learn of, as well as with him, if we would be most helpful to him.
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There is an orientalism in the most restless pioneer, and the farthest west is but the farthest east.
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I am a good horse to travel, but not from choice a roadster. The landscape-painter uses the figures of men to mark a road. He would not make that use of my figure.
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We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect.
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Most people dread finding out when they come to die that they have never really lived.
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The universe expects every man to do his duty in his parallel of latitude.
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The strongest wind cannot stagger a Spirit it is a Spirit's breath. A just man's purpose cannot be split on any Grampus or material rock, but itself will split rocks till it succeeds.
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These men, in teaching us how to die, have at the same time taught us how to live. If this man's acts and words do not create a revival, it will be the severest possible satire on the acts and words that do. It is the best news that America has ever heard.... How many a man who was lately contemplating suicide has now something to live for!
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