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I did not know that mankind was suffering for want of gold.

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
Mankind
Suffering
Gold

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The chickadee and nuthatch are more inspiring society than statesmen and philosophers, and we shall return to these last as to more vulgar companions.
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All these sounds, the crowing of cocks, the baying of dogs, and the hum of insects at noon, are the evidence of nature's health orsound state.
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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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A hero's love is as delicate as a maiden's.
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Not secondary to the sun, she gives us his blaze again, Void of its flame, and sheds a softer day... In Heaven queen she is among the spheres She, mistress-like, makes all things to be pure.
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Many college text-books, which were a weariness and stumbling-block when I studied, I have since read a little with pleasure and profit.
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We are older by faith than by experience.
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I am wont to think that men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men. The former are so much the freer.
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Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every shrub and tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit.
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I have not read far in the statutes of this Commonwealth. It is not profitable reading. They do not always say what is true and they do not always mean what they say.
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It is a great pleasure to escape sometimes from the restless class of Reformers. What if these grievances exist? So do you and I.
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Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.
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The greatest tragedy in life is to spend your whole life fishing only to discover it was never fish that you were after.
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The question is not what you look at – but how you look & whether you see.
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I make it my business to extract from Nature what ever nutriment she can furnish me.... I milk the sky and the earth.
Henry David Thoreau
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Where there is not discernment, the behavior even of the purest soul may in effect amount to coarseness.
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I seem to have dodged all my days with one or two persons, and lived upon expectation,--as if the bud would surely blossom and soI am content to live.
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All sound heard at the greatest possible distance produces one and the same effect, a vibration of the universal lyre, just as the intervening atmosphere makes a distant ridge of earth interesting to our eyes by the azure tint it imparts to it.
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Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end.
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As I came home through the woods with my string of fish, trailing my pole, it being now quite dark, I caught a glimpse of a woodchuck stealing across my path, and felt a strange thrill of savage delight, and was strongly tempted to seize and devour him raw not that I was hungry then, except for that wildness which he represented.
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