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(no category)
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I heartily accept the motto,That government is best which governs least; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe,That government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.
-Henry David Thoreau
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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.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Eastward I go only by force; but westward I go free.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Nothing is so much to be feared as fear.
-Henry David Thoreau
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There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your work with satisfaction,a work at which you would not be ashamed to invoke the Muse.
-Henry David Thoreau
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I lose my respect for the man who can make the mystery of sex the subject of a coarse jest, yet when you speak earnestly and seriously on the subject, is silent.
-Henry David Thoreau
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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, We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Every man will be a poet if he can; otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the poet.
-Henry David Thoreau
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If a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as many risks as he runs.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Action(s)
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We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.
-Henry David Thoreau
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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.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Advice
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I have lived some thirty-odd years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.
-Henry David Thoreau
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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.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Age
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As for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.
-Henry David Thoreau
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The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.
-Henry David Thoreau
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None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm
-Henry David Thoreau
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How earthy old people become --moldy as the grave! Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no foretaste of immortality in it. They remind me of earthworms and mole crickets.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Alcohol/Alcoholism
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Water is the only drink for a wise man.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Ambition
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I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
-Henry David Thoreau, Walden (chapter 18)
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We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake . . . by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor.
-Henry David Thoreau, Walden, from
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Animals
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What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Architecture
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True, there are architects so called in this country, and I have heard of one at least possessed with the idea of making architectural ornaments have a core of truth, a necessity, and hence a beauty, as if it were a revelation to him. All very well perhaps from his point of view, but only a little better than the common dilettantism.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Authors & Writing
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Whether the flower looks better in the nosegay than in the meadow where it grew and we had to wet our feet to get it! Is the scholastic air any advantage?
-Henry David Thoreau
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A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure.
-Henry David Thoreau
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How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Banks / Banking
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Was there ever such an autumn? And yet there was never such a panic and hard times in the commercial world. The merchants and banks are suspending and failing all the country over, but not the sandbanks, solid and warm, and streaked with bloody blackberry vines.
You may run upon them as much as you please--even as the crickets do, and find their account in it. They are the stockholders in these banks, and I hear them creaking their content.
-Henry David Thoreau, Journal, October 14, 1857
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Birds
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One little bird not larger than a sparrow, it may have been a Phalarope, would alight on the turbulent surface where the breakers were five or six feet high, and float buoyantly there like a duck, cunningly taking to its wings and lifting itself a few feet through the air over the foaming crest of each breaker, but sometimes outriding safely a considerable billow which hid it some seconds, when its instinct told it that it would not break. It was a little creature thus to sport with the ocean, but it was as perfect a success in its way as the breakers in theirs.
-Henry David Thoreau, The Beach Again
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Body, the
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Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. The very simplicity and nakedness of man's life in the primitive ages imply this advantage, at least, that they left him still but a sojourner in nature. To be awake is to be alive. Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. Every man is a builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them. Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
-Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854
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Books
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For what are the classics but the noblest thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Caution
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Beware of all enterprises that require a new set of clothes.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Character
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We know but a few men, a great many coats and breeches.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Pity the man who has a character to support --it is worse than a large family -- he is silent poor indeed.
-Henry David Thoreau
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The universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to discuss the characters of individuals.
-Henry David Thoreau
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We falsely attribute to men a determined character -- putting together all their yesterdays -- and averaging them -- we presume we know them. Pity the man who has character to support -- it is worse than a large family -- he is the silent poor indeed.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Chastity
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The generative energy, which, when we are loose, dissipates and makes us unclean, when we are continent invigorates and inspires us. Chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which succeed it.
-Henry David Thoreau
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City Life, Cities
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City life is millions of people being lonesome together.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Class
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It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Common Sense
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Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense? The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Communism
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What men call social virtues, good fellowship, is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter, which lie close together to keep each other warm.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Company, Companions
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I have a great deal of company in my house; especially in the morning, when nobody calls.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Conflict
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The fibers of all things have their tension and are strained like the strings of an instrument.
-Henry David Thoreau
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After all the field of battle possesses many advantages over the drawing-room. There at least is no room for pretension or excessive ceremony, no shaking of hands or rubbing of noses, which make one doubt your sincerity, but hearty as well as hard hand-play. It at least exhibits one of the faces of humanity, the former only a mask.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Conformity & Nonconformity
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As to conforming outwardly, and living your own life inwardly, I have not a very high opinion of that course.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Congress
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If we were left solely to the wordy wit of legislators in Congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonal experience and the effectual complaints of the people, America would not long retain her rank among the nations.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Conversation
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Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Corruption
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There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Criticism
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I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Death
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Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Deception/Lying
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Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Every ambitious would-be empire, clarions it abroad that she is conquering the world to bring it peace, security and freedom, and it is sacrificing her sons only for the most noble and humanitarian purposes. That is a lie; and it is an ancient lie, yet generations still rise and believe it.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Desires
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If a man constantly aspires is he not elevated?
-Henry David Thoreau
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Despair
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The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
-Henry David Thoreau, Walden, chapter 1 Economy
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Determination
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I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Discovery
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In our most trivial walks, we are constantly, though unconsciously, steering like pilots by certain well-known beacons and headlands, and if we go beyond our usual course we still carry in our minds the bearing of some neighboring cape; and not till we are completely lost, or turned round -- for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost -- do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature. Every man has to learn the points of compass again as often as be awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction. Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.
-Henry David Thoreau, Walden, ch. 8 The Village
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Doubt
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We are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspected.
-Henry David Thoreau
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There is no rule more invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspect.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Dreams
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We bless and curse ourselves. Some dreams are divine, as well as some waking thoughts. Donne sings of one Who dreamt devoutlier than most use to pray. Dreams are the touchstones of our characters. We are scarcely less afflicted when we remember some unworthiness in our conduct in a dream, than if it had been actual, and the intensity of our grief, which is our atonement, measures inversely the degree by which this is separated from an actual unworthiness. For in dreams we but act a part which must have been learned and rehearsed in our waking hours, and no doubt could discover some waking consent thereto. If this meanness has not its foundation in us, why are we grieved at it? In dreams we see ourselves naked and acting out our real characters, even more clearly than we see others awake. But an unwavering and commanding virtue would compel even its most fantastic and faintest dreams to respect its ever wakeful authority; as we are accustomed to say carelessly, we should never have dreamed of such a thing. Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.
http://national-library.elecbook.net/830.html
-Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
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Duty
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For many years I was a self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms and did my duty faithfully, though I never received payment for it.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Eccentric, Eccentricity
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You must not blame me if I do talk to the clouds.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Education
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How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?
-Henry David Thoreau
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What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Ego
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I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Emotions
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The heart is forever inexperienced.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Enlightenment, The
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The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Experience
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Experience is in the fingers and head. The heart is inexperienced.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Eyes
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The eye is the jewel of the body.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Facts
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My facts shall be falsehoods to the common sense. I would so state facts that they shall be significant, shall be myths or mythologies. Facts which the mind perceived, thoughts which the body thought -- with these I deal.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Faith
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We must have infinite faith in each other. If we have not, we must never let it leak out that we have not.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling and spending their lives like servants.
-Henry David Thoreau
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The words which express our faith and piety are not definite; yet they are significant and fragrant like frankincense to superior natures.
-Henry David Thoreau
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The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Fame
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Even the best things are not equal to their fame.
-Henry David Thoreau
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The stars are the apexes of what triangles!
-Henry David Thoreau
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Farming
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Farmers are respectable and interesting to me in proportion as they are poor.
-Henry David Thoreau
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By avarice and selfishness, and a groveling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a robber.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Fashion
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We worship not the Graces, nor the Parcae, but Fashion. She spins and weaves and cuts with full authority. The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveler's cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Fear
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People die of fright and live of confidence.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Fish, Fishing
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The perch swallows the grub-worm, the pickerel swallows the perch, and the fisherman swallows the pickerel; and so all the chinks in the scale of being are filled.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Go fish and hunt far and wide day by day - farther and wider - and rest thee by many brooks and hearth-sides without misgiving. Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth. Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures. Let the noon find thee by other lakes, and the night overtake thee everywhere at home. There are no larger fields than these, no worthier games than may here be played.
-Henry David Thoreau, Walden, ch. 10
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Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
-Henry David Thoreau, attributed
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Flowers
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One of the most attractive things about the flowers is their beautiful reserve.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Food
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I have found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Freedom
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The law will never make men free, it is men that have to make the law free.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Friends
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A friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us. The friend asks no return but that his friend will religiously accept and wear and not disgrace his apotheosis of him. They cherish each other's hopes. They are kind to each other's dreams.
-Henry David Thoreau
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We have not so good a right to hate any as our Friend.
-Henry David Thoreau
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A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.
-Henry David Thoreau
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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
-Henry David Thoreau
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The language of friendship is not words but meanings.
-Henry David Thoreau
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The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.
-Henry David Thoreau
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To say that a man is your Friend, means commonly no more than this, that he is not your enemy. Most contemplate only what would be the accidental and trifling advantages of Friendship, as that the Friend can assist in time of need by his substance, or his influence, or his counsel. Even the utmost goodwill and harmony and practical kindness are not sufficient for Friendship, for Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody.
-Henry David Thoreau
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True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Generations
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I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Goals
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In the long run you hit only what you aim at. Therefore, though you should fail immediately, you had better aim at something high.
-Henry David Thoreau
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If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
-Henry David Thoreau, Walden
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God
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It seems to me that the god that is commonly worshipped in civilized countries is not at all divine, though he bears a divine name, but is the overwhelming authority and respectability of mankind combined. Men reverence one another, not yet God.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Goodness
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Goodness is the only investment which never fails.
-Henry David Thoreau
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As for doing good; that is one of the professions which is full. Moreover I have tried it fairly and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution.
-Henry David Thoreau
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If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Government
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If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth,
-Henry David Thoreau
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The government of the world I live in was not framed, like that of Britain, in after-dinner conversations over the wine.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government.
-Henry David Thoreau
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That government is best which governs least.
-Henry David Thoreau
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This American government -- what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Grammar
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When I hear the hypercritical quarreling about grammar and style, the position of the particles, etc., etc., stretching or contracting every speaker to certain rules of theirs. I see that they forget that the first requisite and rule is that expression shall be vital and natural, as much as the voice of a brute or an interjection: first of all, mother tongue; and last of all, artificial or father tongue. Essentially your truest poetic sentence is as free and lawless as a lamb's bleat.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Greed
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He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Grief, Grieving
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What right have I to grieve, who have not ceased to wonder?
-Henry David Thoreau
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We feel at first as if some opportunities of kindness and sympathy were lost, but learn afterward that any pure grief is ample recompense for all. That is, if we are faithful; -- for a spent grief is but sympathy with the soul that disposes events, and is as natural as the resin of Arabian trees. -- Only nature has a right to grieve perpetually, for she only is innocent. Soon the ice will melt, and the blackbirds sing along the river which he frequented, as pleasantly as ever. The same everlasting serenity will appear in this face of God, and we will not be sorrowful, if he is not.
-Henry David Thoreau
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On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Happiness
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Man is the artificer of his own happiness.
-Henry David Thoreau
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We are made happy when reason can discover no occasion for it. The memory of some past moments is more persuasive than the experience of present ones. There have been visions of such breadth and brightness that these motes were invisible in their light.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Health
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Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature --if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you --know that the morning and spring of your life are past. Thus may you feel your pulse.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Must be out-of-doors enough to get experience of wholesome reality, as a ballast to thought and sentiment. Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Home
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We should come home from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day with new experience and character.
-Henry David Thoreau
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I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.
-Henry David Thoreau
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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?
-Henry David Thoreau
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Hospitality
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Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, and hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Humility
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Humility like the darkness, reveals the heavenly lights.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Humor
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Sometimes we are inclined to class those who are once-and-a-half witted with the half-witted, because we appreciate only a third part of their wit.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Ideas
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New ideas come into this world somewhat like falling meteors, with a flash and an explosion, and perhaps somebody
-Henry David Thoreau, Letter, to Daniel Ricketson, in The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, vol. 6, p. 312, Houghton Mifflin (1906)., August 18, 1857
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Identity
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If the fairest features of the landscape are to be named after men, let them be the noblest and worthiest men alone.
-Henry David Thoreau
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A name pronounced is the recognition of the individual to whom it belongs. He who can pronounce my name aright, he can call me, and is entitled to my love and service.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve.
-Henry David Thoreau
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I know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, or thoughts are affection; and am sensible of certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is no part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you.
-Henry David Thoreau
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I fear chiefly lest my expression may not be extravagant enough, may not wander far enough beyond the narrow limit of my daily experience, so as to be adequate to the truth of which I have been convinced. Extravagance! it depends on how you are yarded.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Ignorance & Stupidity
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A man's ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beautiful-while his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless, besides being ugly.
-Henry David Thoreau, Excursions, 1863
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Imagination
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I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?
-Henry David Thoreau
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It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Inheritance
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To inherit property is not to be born -- it is to be still-born, rather.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Inspirational
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Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Instinct
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What is peculiar in the life of a man consists not in his obedience, but his opposition, to his instincts. In one direction or another he strives to live a supernatural life.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Integrity
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The laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Intelligence
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We need only travel enough to give our intellects an airing.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Kindness
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We hate the kindness which we understand.
-Henry David Thoreau
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The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Knowledge
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Knowledge does not come to us in details, but in flashes of light from heaven.
-Henry David Thoreau
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The knowledge of an unlearned man is living and luxuriant like a forest, but covered with mosses and lichens and for the most part inaccessible and going to waste; the knowledge of the man of science is like timber collected in yards for public works, which still supports a green sprout here and there, but even this is liable to dry rot.
-Henry David Thoreau
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To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Language
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We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the filed, but not to describe human character.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Law
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It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for law, so much as a respect for right.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can commit the least act of injustice against the obscurest individual without having to pay the penalty for it.
-Henry David Thoreau
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The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.
-Henry David Thoreau
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There is something servile in the habit of seeking after a law which we may obey. We may study the laws of matter at and for our convenience, but a successful life knows no law. It is an unfortunate discovery certainly, that of a law which binds us where we did not know before that we were bound. Live free, child of the mist--and with respect to knowledge we are all children of the mist. The man who takes the liberty to live is superior to all the laws, by virtue of his relation to the lawmaker. That is active duty, says the Vishnu Purana, which is not for our bondage; that is knowledge which is for our liberation: all other duty is good only unto weariness; all other knowledge is only the cleverness of an artist.
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext97/wlkng10.txt
-Henry David Thoreau, Walking
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Laziness
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To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Leadership
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We perceive and are affected by changes too subtle to be described.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Letters (writing)
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I have received no more than one or two letters in my life that were worth the postage.
-Henry David Thoreau, Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854)
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Liberty
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Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Life
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If I shall sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I'm sure that, for me, there would be nothing left worth living for.
-Henry David Thoreau
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I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life... I wanted to live so sturdily and so Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life... to drive life into a corner to know it by experience and be able to give an account of it in my next excursion.
-Henry David Thoreau
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However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are the richest.
-Henry David Thoreau
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You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Love
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There is no remedy for love than to love more.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Love must be as much a light, as it is a flame.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Loyalty
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The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others
-Henry David Thoreau
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Manners
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Our manners have been corrupted by communication with the saints.
-Henry David Thoreau, Walden Economy, 1854
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If I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Behave so the aroma of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Masses
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The mass never comes up to the standard of its best member, but on the contrary degrades itself to a level with the lowest.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Maturity
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We seem but to linger in manhood to tell the dreams of our childhood, and they vanish out of memory ere we learn the language.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Media
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To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, an they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.
-Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854
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We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Mediocrity
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The boy gathers materials for a temple, and then when he is thirty, concludes to build a woodshed.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Memory
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Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Of what significance are the things you can forget.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Military, the
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Visit the Navy-Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts -- a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniments.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Minorities
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A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Mistakes
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The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Money
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Almost any man knows how to earn money, but not one in a million knows how to spend it.
-Henry David Thoreau
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The way by which you may get money almost without exception leads downward.
-Henry David Thoreau
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The only wealth is life.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Morals
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Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.
Aim above morality.
Be not simply good;
be good for something.
All fables, indeed, have their morals; but the innocent enjoy the story. Let nothing come between you and the light. Respect men and brothers only. When you travel to the Celestial City, carry no letter of introduction. When you knock, ask to see God,
http://www.walden.org/institute/thoreau/writings/correspondence/1848_03_27_Blake.htm
-Henry David Thoreau, letter to H.G.O. Blake, March 27, 1848
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Music
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The pleasure we feel in music springs from the obedience which is in it.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Mystery
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At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Myths, Mythology
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It is interesting to observe with what singular unanimity the farthest sundered nations and generations consent to give completeness and roundness to an ancient fable, of which they indistinctly appreciate the beauty or the truth. By a faint and dream-like effort, though it be only by the vote of a scientific body, the dullest posterity slowly add some trait to the mythus. As when astronomers call the lately discovered planet Neptune; or the asteroid Astr
-Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, 1849
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Nation, Nationality, Nationalism
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Nations! What are nations? Tartars! and Huns! and Chinamen! Like insects they swarm. The historian strives in vain to make them memorable. It is for want of a man that there are so many men. It is individuals that populate the world.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Nature
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We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder-cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.
-Henry David Thoreau
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To him whom contemplates a trait of natural beauty, no harm nor despair can come. The doctrines of despair, spiritual or political servitude, were never taught by those who shared the serenity of Nature. For each phase of Nature, though not invisible, is yet not too distinct or obtrusive. It is there to be found when we look for it, but not too demanding of our attention.
-Henry David Thoreau
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The wilderness is near as well as dear to every man. Even the oldest villages are indebted to the border of wild wood which surrounds them, more than to the gardens of men. There is something indescribably inspiriting and beautiful in the aspect of the forest skirting and occasionally jutting into the midst of new towns, which, like the sand-heaps of fresh fox-burrows, have sprung up in their midst. The very uprightness of the pines and maples asserts the ancient rectitude and vigor of nature. Our lives need the relief of such a background, where the pine flourishes and the jay still screams.
-Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers in The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, vol. 1, p. 179, Houghton Mifflin (1906)., 1849
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Observation
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Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.
-Henry David Thoreau, Journal
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Oceans
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The ocean is a wilderness reaching round the globe, wilder than a Bengal jungle, and fuller of monsters, washing the very wharves of our cities and the gardens of our sea-side residences.
-Henry David Thoreau, The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, vol. 4, 1906
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Opinion
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Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Passion
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Do what you love. Know you own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.
-Henry David Thoreau
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People
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You know about a person who deeply interests you more than you can be told. A look, a gesture, an act, which to everybody else is insignificant tells you more about that one than words can.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Philosophy
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What sort of philosophers are we, who know absolutely nothing about the origin and destiny of cats?
-Henry David Thoreau
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To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Poetry
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Poetry implies the whole truth, philosophy expresses only a particle of it.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Good poetry seems too simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Politics
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Politics is the gizzard of society, full of gut and gravel.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Potential
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We are not what we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for what we are capable of being.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Poverty
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Give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth.
-Henry David Thoreau
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However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Praise
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The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked what I thought, and attended to my answer.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Pride
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I would not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Prison
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Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Problems
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There are thousands hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Profit
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I respect not his labors, his farm where everything has its price, who would carry the landscape, who would carry his God, to market, if he could get anything for him; who goes to market for his god as it is; on whose farm nothing grows free, whose fields bear no crops, whose meadows no flowers, whose trees no fruits, but dollars.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Progress
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When any real progress is made, we unlearn and learn anew what we thought we knew before.
-Henry David Thoreau
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To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Property
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The highest law gives a thing to him who can use it.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Prophecy
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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.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Protest
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I quietly declare war with the State, after my fashion, though I will still make use and get advantage of her as I can, as is usual in such cases.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Purity
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The purity men love is like the mists which envelope the earth, and not like the azure ether beyond.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Reading
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To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any other exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institution --such call I good books.
-Henry David Thoreau
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How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.
-Henry David Thoreau
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A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must lay it down and commence living on its hint. . . . What I began by reading I must finish by acting.
-Henry David Thoreau, Journal, February 19, 1841
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Reality
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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.
-Henry David Thoreau, Walden
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Reform, Correction
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I believe that what so saddens the reformer is not his sympathy with his fellows in distress, but, though he be the holiest son of God, is his private ail. Let this be righted, let the spring come to him, the morning rise over his couch, and he will forsake his generous companions without apology.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Regret & Remorse
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To regret deeply is to live afresh.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it come to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Respect
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We live thick and are in each other's way, and stumble over one another, and I think we thus lose some respect for one another.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Rest, Leisure
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He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate.
-Henry David Thoreau
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A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars. What are threescore years and ten hurriedly and coarsely lived to moments of divine leisure in which your life is coincident with the life of the universe?
-Henry David Thoreau
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Revolution
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The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? You may say the wisest thing you can, old man, -- you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind, -- I hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from all that.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Risk
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A man sits as many risks as he runs.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Rivers
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I was born upon thy bank, river,
My blood flows in thy stream,
And thou meanderest forever
At the bottom of my dream.
-Henry David Thoreau, Journals, 1906 1842 entry
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Rules
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Any fool can make a rule, and every fool will mind it.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Absolutely speaking, Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you is by no means a golden rule, but the best of current silver. An honest man would have but little occasion for it. It is golden not to have any rule at all in such a case.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Sailing
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He is the best sailor who can steer within the fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive power out of the greatest obstacles.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Scholars, Scholarship
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The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Science
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If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only one fact, or the description of one actual phenomenon, to infer all the particular results at that point. Now we know only a few laws, and our result is vitiated, not, of course, by any confusion or irregularity in Nature, but by our ignorance of essential elements in the calculation. Our notions of law and harmony are commonly confined to those instances which we detect; but the harmony which results from a far greater number of seemingly conflicting, but really concurring, laws, which we have not detected, is still more wonderful. The particular laws are as our points of view, as, to the traveler, a mountain outline varies with every step, and it has an infinite number of profiles, though absolutely but one form. Even when cleft or bored through it is not comprehended in its entireness.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Seasons
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Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each. Let them be your only diet, drink, and botanical medicines.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Many of the phenomena of Winter are suggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We are accustomed to hear this king described as a rude and boisterous tyrant; but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of Summer.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Silence
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I have been breaking silence these twenty-three years and have hardly made a rent in it.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Simplicity
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Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion.
-Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Where I lived, And What I Lived For
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Sin
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We cannot well do without our sins; they are the highway of our virtue.
-Henry David Thoreau
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After the first blush of sin comes its indifference.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Sincerity
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I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board.
-Henry David Thoreau
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I only desire sincere relations with the worthiest of my acquaintance, that they may give me an opportunity once in a year to speak the truth.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Slavery
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Talk about slavery! It is not the peculiar institution of the South. It exists wherever men are bought and sold, wherever a man allows himself to be made a mere thing or a tool, and surrenders his inalienable rights of reason and conscience. Indeed, this slavery is more complete than that which enslaves the body alone... I never yet met with, or heard of, a judge who was not a slave of this kind, and so the finest and most unfailing weapon of injustice. He fetches a slightly higher price than the black men only because he is a more valuable slave.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Society
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The way in which men cling to old institutions after the life has departed out of them, and out of themselves, reminds me of those monkeys which cling by their tails -- aye, whose tails contract about the limbs, even the dead limbs, of the forest, and they hang suspended beyond the hunter's reach long after they are dead. It is of no use to argue with such men. They have not an apprehensive intellect, but merely, as it were a prehensile tail.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Wherever a man goes, men will pursue him and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Sobriety, severity, and self-respect are the foundations of all true sociality.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Solitude
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I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.
-Henry David Thoreau
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If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.
-Henry David Thoreau
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The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till the other is ready, and it may be along time before they get off.
-Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854
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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. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows.
-Henry David Thoreau, Walden
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Soul
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However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.
-Henry David Thoreau
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State
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There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. I please myself with imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose if a few went to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men. A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Strength
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Glances of true beauty can be seen in the faces of those who live in true meekness.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Success & Failure
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You must get your living by loving, or at least half your life is a failure.
-Henry David Thoreau
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We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Men are born to succeed, not to fail.
-Henry David Thoreau
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The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?
-Henry David Thoreau
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Sunshine
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The sun is but a morning star.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Talent
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The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Taxation
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If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Technology
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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.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Thought
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A man thinks as well through his legs and arms as this brain.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Thought is the sculptor who can create the person you want to be.
-Henry David Thoreau
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To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Associate reverently, as much as you can, with your loftiest thoughts.
-Henry David Thoreau
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How can they expect a harvest of thought who have not had the seed time of character.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is a nest egg by the side of which more will be laid.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and whittled them.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice. Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads.What was the meaning of that South-Sea Exploring Expedition, with all its parade and expense, but an indirect recognition of the fact that there are continents and seas in the moral world to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one's being alone.
-Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Ch. 18 Conclusion
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As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Time
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In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment and will never be more divine in the lapse of the ages. Time is but a stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it, but when I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away but eternity remains.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Time is but the stream I go fishing in. I drink at it, but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. It's thin current slides away, but eternity remains.
-Henry David Thoreau
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As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
-Henry David Thoreau
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You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Tools
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But lo! men have become the tools of their tools.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Tradition
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Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but religiously follows the new.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Trains, Railroads
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That devilish Iron Horse, whose ear-rending neigh is heard throughout the town, has muddied the Boiling Spring with his foot, and he it is that has browsed off all the woods on Walden shore, that Trojan horse, with a thousand men in his belly, introduced by mercenary Greeks! Where is the country's champion, the Moore of Moore Hall, to meet him at the Deep Cut and thrust an avenging lance between the ribs of the bloated pest?
-Henry David Thoreau
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Travel
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He who is only a traveler learns things at second-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority. We are most interested when science reports what those men already know practically or instinctively, for that alone is a true humanity, or account of human experience.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Only the traveling is good which reveals to me the value of home and enables me to enjoy it better.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Trees
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If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Trust
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I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Truth
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Between whom there is hearty truth, there is love.
-Henry David Thoreau
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It takes two to speak truth -- one to speak, and another to hear.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Understanding
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We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see. How few things can a man measure with the tape of his understanding! How many greater things might he be seeing in the meanwhile!
-Henry David Thoreau
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Universe, The
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The universe is wider than our views of it.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Value
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The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Vanity
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If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Vegetarian
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One farmer says to me, You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with; and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle.
-Henry David Thoreau
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I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Virtue
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That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another s. We see so much only as we possess.
-Henry David Thoreau
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There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Voting
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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.
-Henry David Thoreau
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War
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The savage in man is never quite eradicated.
-Henry David Thoreau
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I have a deep sympathy with war, it so apes the gait and bearing of the soul.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Water
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To watch this crystal globe just sent from heaven to associate with me. While these clouds and this somber drizzling weather shut all in, we two draw nearer and know one another. The gathering in of the clouds with the last rush and dying breath of the wind, and then the regular dripping of twigs and leaves the country over, the impression of inward comfort and Sociableness, the drenched stubble and trees that drop beads on you as you pass, their dim outline seen through the rain on all sides drooping in sympathy with yourself. These are my undisputed territory. This is Nature's English comfort.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Wealth
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That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
-Henry David Thoreau
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The rich man is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.
-Henry David Thoreau
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A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can let alone.
-Henry David Thoreau, Walden
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Wilderness
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In wildness is the preservation of the world.
-Henry David Thoreau
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We need the tonic of wildness, to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Women
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It requires nothing less than a chivalric feeling to sustain a conversation with a lady.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Words
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The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Work
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Men have become the tools of their trade.
-Henry David Thoreau
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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.
-Henry David Thoreau
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There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now.
-Henry David Thoreau
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It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?
-Henry David Thoreau
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World
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The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit -- not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic. Its throes will heave our exuviate from their graves.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Worth
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All good things are cheap: all bad are very dear.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Youth
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Youth gets together with their materials to build a bridge to the moon or maybe a palace on earth; then in middle age they decide to build a woodshed with them instead.
-Henry David Thoreau
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Books by and about Henry David Thoreau
