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Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?
Henry David Thoreau
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I have an immense appetite for solitude, like an infant for sleep, and if I don't get enough for this year, I shall cry all the next.
Henry David Thoreau
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So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.
Henry David Thoreau
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If it is necessary, omit one bridge over the river, go round a little there, and throw one arch at least over the darker gulf of ignorance which surrounds us.
Henry David Thoreau
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The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive.
Henry David Thoreau
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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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Good for the body is the work of the body, good for the soul the work of the soul, and good for either the work of the other.
Henry David Thoreau
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I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we mingle with the herd of common men.
Henry David Thoreau
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Amid a world of noisy, shallow actors it is noble to stand aside and say, 'I will simply be.
Henry David Thoreau
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Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.
Henry David Thoreau
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The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. I have no wealth to bestow on him. If he knows that I am happy in loving him, he will want no other reward. Is not friendship divine in this?
Henry David Thoreau
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Talk of mysteries! Think of our life in nature — daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it—rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth! the actual world! the common sensei Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?
Henry David Thoreau
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In winter we lead a more inward life. Our hearts are warm and cheery, like cottages under drifts...
Henry David Thoreau
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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.
Henry David Thoreau
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But what is quackery? It is commonly an attempt to cure the diseases of a man by addressing his body alone. There is need of a physician who shall minister to both soul and body at once, that is, to man. Now he falls between two stools.
Henry David Thoreau
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I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulette I could have worn.
Henry David Thoreau
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When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.
Henry David Thoreau
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One farmer says to me, "You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make the bones with;" and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying himself 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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Still we live meanly like ants, though the fable tells us we were long ago changed into men.
Henry David Thoreau
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The process of discovery is very simple. An unwearied and systematic application of known laws to nature, causes the unknown to reveal themselves. Almost any mode of observation will be successful at last, for what is most wanted is method.
Henry David Thoreau
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Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.
Henry David Thoreau
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What sort of philosophers are we, who know absolutely nothing of the origin and destiny of cats?
Henry David Thoreau
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No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer?
Henry David Thoreau
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It is never too late to give up our prejudices.
Henry David Thoreau
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Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.
Henry David Thoreau
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Quote of the day
Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor.
Ogden Nash
Henry David Thoreau
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Born:
July 12, 1817
Died:
May 6, 1862
(aged 44)
Bio:
Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, and historian.
Known for:
Walden (1854)
Civil Disobedience (1849)
The Maine woods
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
A Plea for Captain John Brown (1859)
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