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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!

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
Wants
Unimportant
Life
Keep
Present
Possessions
Past
Struggle
Worrying
Back
Worry
Struggling
Live
Looking
Possession
Needs
Destroy
Mind
Simple
Burden
Years
Peace
Waste
Simplify
Things
Enjoy

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Methinks my own soul must be a bright invisible green.
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One man lies in his words, and gets a bad reputation another in his manners, and enjoys a good one.
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I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks.
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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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How little do the most wonderful inventions of modern times detain us. They insult nature. Every machine, or particular application, seems a slight outrage against universal laws.
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He is the best sailor who can steer within the fewest points of the wind, and extract a motive power out of the greatest obstacles. Most begin to veer and tack as soon as the wind changes from aft, and as within the tropics it does not blow from all points of the compass, there are some harbors which they can never reach.
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Continued traveling is far from productive. It begins with wearing away the soles of the shoes, and making the feet sore, and erelong it will wear a man clean up, after making his heart sore into the bargain. I have observed that the afterlife of those who have traveled much is very pathetic.
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I was awakened at midnight by some heavy, low-flying bird, probably a loon, flapping by close over my head, along the shore. So, turning the other side of my half-clad body to the fire, I sought slumber again.
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A man will not need to study history to find out what is best for his own culture.
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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.'
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Thank God, they cannot cut down the clouds!
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Live free, child of the mist,- and with respect to knowledge we are allchildren of the mist.
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I fear that we are such gods or demigods only as fauns and satyrs, the divine allied to beasts, the creatures of appetite, and that, to some extent, our very life is our disgrace.
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They take great pride in making their dinner cost much I take my pride in making my dinner cost so little.
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What wealth is it to have such friends that we cannot think of them without elevation!
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In the meanest are all the materials of manhood, only they are not rightly disposed.
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Eastward I go only by force but westward I go free.
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