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There are theoretical reformers at all times, and all the world over, living on anticipation.

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
Time
World
Reformers
Theoretical
Anticipation
Reform
Times
Living

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Is it not possible that an individual may be right and a government wrong? Are laws to be enforced simply because they were made? Or declared by any number of men to be good, if they are NOT good?
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For eighteen hundred years, though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of legislation?
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Art may varnish and gild, but it can do no more.
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The way by which you may get money almost without exception leads downward.
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Simplicity is the law of Nature for man as well as for flowers. When the tapestry (corolla) of the nuptial bed (calyx) is excessive, luxuriant, it is unproductive. The fertile flowers are single, not double.
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Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. Why, nature is but another name for health.
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Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.
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Poetry is the mysticism of mankind.
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We cannot well do without our sins they are the highway of our virtue.
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One should be always on the trail of one's own deepest nature. For it is the fearless living out of your own essential nature that connects you to the Divine.
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The echo is, to some extent, an original sound, and therein is the magic and charm of it. It is not merely a repetition of what was worth repeating in the bell, but partly the voice of the wood the same trivial words and notes sung by a wood-nymph.
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We slander the hyena man is the fiercest and cruelest animal.
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I am grateful for what I have. My thanksgiving is perpetual.
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Simplicity is the peak of civilization.
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My vicinity affords many good walks and though for so many years I have walked almost every day, and sometimes for several days together, I have not yet exhausted them. An absolutely new prospect is a great happiness, and I can still get this any afternoon. Two or three hours' walking will carry me to as strange a country as I ever expect to see.
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To speak or do anything that shall concern mankind, one must speak and act as if well, or from that grain of health which he has left.
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If private men are obliged to perform the offices of government, to protect the weak and dispense justice, then the government becomes only a hired man, or clerk, to perform menial or indifferent services.
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Let us not play at kittly-benders. There is a solid bottom everywhere.
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The most stupendous scenery ceases to be sublime when it becomes distinct, or in other words limited, and the imagination is no longer encouraged to exaggerate it. The actual height and breadth of a mountain or a waterfall are always ridiculously small they are the imagined only that content us.
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It required some rudeness to disturb with our boat the mirror-like surface of the water, in which every twig and blade of grass was so faithfully reflected too faithfully indeed for art to imitate, for only Nature may exaggerate herself.
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