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That so many are ready to live by luck, and so get the means of commanding the labor of others less lucky, without contributing any value to society! And that is called enterprise! I know of no more startling development of the immorality of trade, and all the common modes of getting a living.

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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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
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Enterprise
Live
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Without
Society
Trade
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It has been so written, for the most part, that the times it describes are with remarkable propriety called dark ages. They are dark, as one has observed, because we are so in the dark about them.
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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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All men are children, and of one family.
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The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?
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I have found it a singular luxury to talk across the pond to a companion on the opposite side.
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It is pitiful when a man bears a name for convenience merely, who has earned neither name nor fame.
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Who could believe in the prophecies ... that the world would end this summer, while one milkweed with faith matured its seeds.
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It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart it being much more sensitive.
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When the chopper would praise a pine, he will commonly tell you that the one he cut was so big that a yoke of oxen stood on its stump as if that were what the pine had grown for, to become the footstool of oxen.
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We do not enjoy poetry unless we know it to be poetry.
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In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society.
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When we are in health, all sounds fife and drum for us we hear the notes of music in the air, or catch its echoes dying away when we awake in the dawn.
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Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house.
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I must walk toward Oregon, and not toward Europe. And that way the nation is moving, and I may say that mankind progress from east to west. We go eastward to realize history and study the works of art and literature, retracing the steps of the race we go westward as into the future, with a spirit of enterprise and adventure.
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There is not one kind of food for all men. You must and you will feed those faculties which you exercise. The laborer whose body is weary does not require the same food with the scholar whose brain is weary.
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I would give all the wealth of the world, and all the deeds of all the heroes, for one true vision.
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I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
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What avails it that another loves you, if he does not understand you? Such love is a curse.
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