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For the most part, we are not where we are, but in a false position. Through an infirmity of our natures, we suppose a case, and put ourselves into it, and hence are in two cases at the same time, and it is doubly difficult to get out.

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
Part
Hence
Time
Suppose
False
Case
Cases
Position
Doubly
Difficult
Infirmity
Two
Natures

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If there is any hell more unprincipled than our rulers, and we, the ruled, I feel curious to see it.
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The laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day.
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To be awake is to be completely alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake.
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The books for young people say a great deal about the selection of Friends it is because they really have nothing to say about Friends. They mean associates and confidants merely.
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Man is an animal who more than any other can adapt himself to all climates and circumstances.
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Left to herself, nature is always more or less civilized, and delights in a certain refinement but where the axe has encroached upon the edge of the forest, the dead and unsightly limbs of the pine, which she had concealed with green banks of verdure, are exposed to sight.
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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.
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We live but a fraction of our lives.
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The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.
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What the first philosopher taught the last will have to repeat.
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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.
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I thought, as I have my living to get, and have not eaten today, that I might go a- fishing. That's the true industry for poets. It is the only trade I have learned.
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How can he remember well his ignorance - which his growth requires - who has so often to use his knowledge?
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The true finish is the work of time, and the use to which a thing is put. The elements are still polishing the pyramids.
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The question is whether you can bear freedom. At present the vast majority of men, whether white or black, require the discipline of labor which enslaves them for their own good.
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What lies before us and what lies behind us are small matters compared to what lies within us. And when we bring what is within out into the world, miracles happen.
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What right have I to grieve, who have not ceased to wonder?
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If however the law is so promulgated that it of necessity makes you an agent of injustices against another, then I say to you ... break the law.
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With all your science can you tell me how it is, and when it is, that light comes into the soul?
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