Henry David Thoreau Quotes
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The majority of the men of the North, and of the South and East and West, are not men of principle. If they vote, they do not sendmen to Congress on errands of humanity; but while their brothers and sisters are being scourged and hung for loving liberty,... it is the mismanagement of wood and iron and stone and gold which concerns them.
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But labor of the hands, even when pursued to the verge of drudgery, is perhaps never the worst form of idleness. It has a constantand imperishable moral, and to the scholar it yields a classic result.
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It often happens that a man is more humanely related to a cat or dog than to any human being.
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What a healthy out-of-door appetite it takes to relish the apple of life, the apple of the world, then!
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This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! I am awaked almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. It interrupts my dreams. There is no sabbath. It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work.
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Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.
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Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion.
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The philanthropist too often surrounds mankind with the remembrance of his own cast- off griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy. We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease, and take care that this does not spread by contagion.
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Every man is the builder of a temple called his body.
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The next time the novelist rings the bell I will not stir though the meeting-house burn down.
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I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born?
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Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.
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True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.
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Almost any man knows how to earn money, but not one in a million knows how to spend it.
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Man wanted a home, a place for warmth, or comfort, first of physical warmth, then the warmth of the affections.
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This bird sees the white man come and the Indian withdraw, but it withdraws not. Its untamed voice is still heard above the tinkling of the forge... It remains to remind us of aboriginal nature.
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What is morality but immemorial custom? Conscience is the chief of conservatives.
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As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.
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The heart is forever inexperienced.
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Give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth.
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To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.
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By one bait or another, Nature allures inhabitants into all her recesses.
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Men profess to be lovers of music, but for the most part they give no evidence in their opinions and lives that they have heard it.
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As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society.
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Homer and Shakespeare and Milton and Marvell and Wordsworth are but the rustling of leaves and crackling of twigs in the forest, and there is not yet the sound of any bird. The Muse has never lifted up her voice to sing.
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I find it so difficult to dispose of the few facts which to me are significant, that I hesitate to burden my attention with thosewhich are insignificant, which only a divine mind could illustrate. Such is, for the most part, the news in newspapers and conversation.
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The fruits eaten temperately need not make us ashamed of our appetites, nor interrupt the worthiest pursuits. But put an extra condiment into your dish, and it will poison you.
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One cannot too soon forget his errors and misdemeanors. To dwell long upon them is to add to the offense.
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Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.
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Do not suffer your life to be taken by newspapers.
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