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So is the English Parliament provincial. Mere country bumpkins, they betray themselves, when any more important question arises for them to settle, the Irish question, for instance,--the English question why did I not say? Their natures are subdued to what they work in. Their good breeding respects only secondary objects.

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
Question
Betray
Natures
Country
Settling
Secondary
Important
Manners
Respects
Work
Arise
Breeding
Good
Instance
Arises
English
Irish
Mere
Parliament
Provincial
Objects
Settle
Subdued

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I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.
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The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure.
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It is equally impossible to forget our Friends, and to make them answer to our ideal. When they say farewell, then indeed we beginto keep them company. How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual Friends, that we may go and meet their ideal cousins.
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The faultfinder will find faults even in paradise.
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If we live in the Nineteenth Century, why should we not enjoy the advantages which the Nineteenth Century offers? Why should our life be in any respect provincial?
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Writing your name can lead to writing sentences. And the next thing you'll be doing is writing paragraphs, and then books. And then you'll be in as much trouble as I am!
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There is a slumbering subterranean fire in nature which never goes out, and which no cold can chill.
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Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.
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As all curves have reference to their centres or foci, so all beauty of character has reference to the soul, and is a graceful gesture of recognition or waving of the body toward it.
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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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Let your condiments be in the condition of your senses.
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All that is told of the sea has a fabulous sound to an inhabitant of the land and all its products have a certain fabulous quality, as if they belonged to another planet.
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Books that are books are all that you want, and there are but a half dozen in any thousand.
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Love your life, poor as it is.
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That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest.
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I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beechtree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines.
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I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.
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Knowledge does not come to us in details, but in flashes of light from heaven.
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One may discover a new side to his most intimate friend when for the first time he hears him speak in public. He will be stranger to him as he is more familiar to the audience. The longest intimacy could not foretell how he would behave then
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A simple woman down in Tyngsborough, at whose house I once stopped to get a draught of water, when I said, recognizing the bucket, that I had stopped there nine years before for the same purpose, asked if I was not a traveler, supposing that I had been traveling ever since, and had now come round again.
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