Quote

It is possible to invent a house still more convenient and luxurious than we have...but shall we always study to obtain more of these things, and not sometimes to be content with less?

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
Sometimes
Content
Always
Shall
Things
Study
Possible
Less
Luxurious
House
Obtain
Stills
Convenient
Still
Invent

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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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To say that God has given a man many and great talents frequently means that he has brought his heavens down within reach of his hands.
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When was it that men agreed to respect the appearance and not the reality?
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We do not enjoy poetry unless we know it to be poetry.
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What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.
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Should not every apartment in which man dwells be lofty enough to create some obscurity overhead, where flickering shadows may play at evening about the rafters?
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The better part of the man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool's life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before.
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If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself.
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All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong.
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The youth may build or plant or sail, only let him not be hindered from doing that which he tells me he would like to do.
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A man might well pray that he may not taboo or curse any portion of nature by being buried in it.
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All men are really most attracted by the beauty of plain speech, and they even write in a florid style in imitation of this. Theyprefer to be misunderstood rather than to come short of its exuberance.
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Biography, too, is liable to the same objection it should be autobiography. Let us not, as the Germans advise, endeavor to go abroad and vex our bowels that we may be somebody else to explain him. If I am not I, who will be?
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Treat your friends for what you know them to be. Regard no surfaces. Consider not what they did, but what they intended.
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It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.
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To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning.
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Fishing has been styled 'a contemplative man's recreation,' ... and science is only a more contemplative man's recreation.
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Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life ... would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights' Entertainments.
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