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Henry David Thoreau -
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A man receives only what he is ready to receive... The phenomenon or fact that cannot in any wise be linked with the rest of what he has observed, he does not observe.
Henry David Thoreau
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There are various, nay, incredible faiths; why should we be alarmed at any of them? What man believes, God believes.
Henry David Thoreau
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I have not yet learned to live, that I can see, and I fear that I shall not very soon. I find, however, that in the long run things correspond to my original idea,--that they correspond to nothing else so much; and thus a man may really be a true prophet without any great exertion. The day is never so dark, nor the night even, but that the laws at least of light still prevail, and so may make it light in our minds if they are open to the truth.
Henry David Thoreau
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Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towardsrecognizing and organizing the rights of man?
Henry David Thoreau
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Every man has to learn the points of the compass again as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction.
Henry David Thoreau
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Indeed, the best books have a use, like sticks and stones, which is above or beside their design, not anticipated in the preface,not concluded in the appendix. Even Virgil's poetry serves a very different use to me today from what it did to his contemporaries. It has often an acquired and accidental value merely, proving that man is still man in the world.
Henry David Thoreau
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A living dog is better than a dead lion. Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmy that he can? Let every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made. Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? 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
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I love man-kind, but I hate the institutions of the dead unkind. Men execute nothing so faithfully as the wills of the dead, to the last codicil and letter. They rule this world, and the living are but their executors. Such foundation too have our lectures and our sermons, commonly.
Henry David Thoreau
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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.
Henry David Thoreau
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If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man.
Henry David Thoreau
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Reform keeps many scores of newspapers in its service, but not one man.
Henry David Thoreau
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But man's capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little have been tried.
Henry David Thoreau
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A man of fine perceptions is more truly feminine than a merely sentimental woman.
Henry David Thoreau
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A thoroughbred business man cannot enter heartily upon the business of life without first looking into his accounts.
Henry David Thoreau
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How novel and original must be each new mans view of the universe - for though the world is so old - and so many books have been written - each object appears wholly undescribed to our experience - each field of thought wholly unexplored - the whole world is an America - a New World.
Henry David Thoreau
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We could not help contrasting the equanimity of Nature with the bustle and impatience of man. His words and actions presume alwaysa crisis near at hand, but she is forever silent and unpretending.
Henry David Thoreau
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The frontiers are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man fronts a fact, though that fact be his neighbor, there is an unsettled wilderness between him and Canada, between him and the setting sun, or, farther still, between him and it.
Henry David Thoreau
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It is not in vain that man speaks to man. This is the value of literature.
Henry David Thoreau
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Man needs to know but little more than a lobster in order to catch him in his traps.
Henry David Thoreau
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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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To say that a man is your Friend means commonly no more than this, that he is not your enemy.
Henry David Thoreau
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What avail all your scholarly accomplishments and learning, compared with wisdom and manhood? To omit his other behavior, see whata work this comparatively unread and unlettered man wrote within six weeks. Where is our professor of belles-lettres, or of logic and rhetoric, who can write so well?
Henry David Thoreau
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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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The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man's abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.
Henry David Thoreau
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Those services which the community will most readily pay for it is most disagreeable to render. You are paid for being something less than a man.
Henry David Thoreau
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Quote of the day
Ultimately, America's answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.
Robert F. Kennedy
Henry David Thoreau
Creative Commons
Born:
July 12, 1817
Died:
May 6, 1862
(aged 44)
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