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If Columbus was the first to discover the islands, Americus Vespucius and Cabot, and the Puritans, and we their descendants, havediscovered only the shores of America.

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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Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
First
Shores
Columbus
Descendants
Islands
Shore
Discover
America
Puritans
Firsts
Puritan

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In what concerns you much, do not think that you have companions: know that you are alone in the world.
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Did ever a man try heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no advantage in them - that it was a vain endeavor?
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I hate the present modes of living and getting a living. Farming and shopkeeping and working at a trade or profession are all odious to me. I should relish getting my living in a simple, primitive fashion.
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The silence sings. It is musical. I remember a night when it was audible. I heard the unspeakable.
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A strange age of the world this, when empires, kingdoms, and republics come a-begging to a private man's door, and utter their complaints at his elbow! I cannot take up a newspaper but I find that some wretched government or other, hard pushed and on its last legs, is interceding with me, the reader, to vote for it.
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Every oak tree started out as a couple of nuts who stood their ground.
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I love a life whose plot is simple.
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Between whom there is hearty truth, there is love and in proportion to our truthfulness and confidence in one another, our lives are divine and miraculous, and answer to our ideal. . . . Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody.
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Even trees do not die without a groan.
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Goodness is the only investment that never fails.
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I never was so rapid in my virtue but my vice kept up with me.
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We are born as innocents. We are polluted by advice.
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If Nature is our mother, then God is our father.
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If you would feel the full force of a tempest, take up your residence on the top of Mount Washington, or at the Highland Light, inTruro.
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It is not worth the while to let our imperfections disturb us always. The conscience really does not, and ought not to monopolizethe whole of our lives, any more than the heart or the head. It is as liable to disease as any other part.
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It is true, we are such poor navigators that our thoughts, for the most part, stand off and on upon a harborless coast, are conversant only with the bights of the bays of poesy, or steer for the public ports of entry, and go into the dry docks of science, where they merely refit for this world, and no natural currents concur to individualize them.
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You don't know your testament when you see it.
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Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.
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Improve every opportunity to be melancholy.
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Simplify your life. Don't waste the years struggling for things that are unimportant. Don't burden yourself with possessions. Keep your needs and wants simple and enjoy what you have. Don't destroy your peace of mind by looking back, worrying about the past. Live in the present. Simplify!
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