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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.

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
Would
Concord
Pursuits
Ties
Engaged
Suicide
Independence
Pursuit
Private
Rend

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I turned my face more exclusively than ever to the woods, where I was better known.
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The effect of a good government is to make life more valuable of a bad one, to make it less valuable.
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All that man has to say or do that can possibly concern mankind is in some shape or other to tell the story of his love-to sing, and, if he is fortunate and keeps alive, he will be forever in love.
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So easy is it, though many housekeepers doubt it, to establish new and better customs in the place of the old.
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I feel as if my life had grown more outward when I can express it.
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This bird sees the white man come and the Indian withdraw, but it withdraws not. Its untamed voice is still heard above the tinkling of the forge... It remains to remind us of aboriginal nature.
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How meanly and grossly do we deal with nature!
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The press is, almost without exception, corrupt.
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My eye is educated to discover anything on the ground, as chestnuts, etc. It is probably wholesomer to look at the ground much than at the heavens.
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The sea-shore is a sort of neutral ground, a most advantageous point from which to contemplate the world....There is naked Nature, inhumanly sincere, wasting no thought on man, nibbling at the cliffy shore where gulls wheel amid the spray.
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The only fruit which even much living yields seems to be often only some trivial success,--the ability to do some slight thing better. We make conquest only of husks and shells for the most part,--at least apparently,--but sometimes these are cinnamon and spices, you know.
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In order to die, you must first have lived.
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I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals.
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You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land there is no other life but this.
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In wildness is the preservation of the world.
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I am not afraid of praise, for I have practiced it on myself.
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Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.
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In literature it is only the wild that attracts us.
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I have found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also.
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It is remarkable that almost all speakers and writers feel it to be incumbent on them, sooner or later, to prove or acknowledge the personality of God. Some Earl of Bridgewater, thinking it better late than never, has provided for it in his will. It is a sad mistake.
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