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Henry David Thoreau -
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But the divinest poem, or the life of a great man, is the severest satire.... The greater the genius, the keener the edge of the satire.
Henry David Thoreau
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The man of genius knows what he is aiming at; nobody else knows. And he alone knows when something comes between him and his object. In the course of generations, however, men will excuse you for not doing as they do, if you will bring enough to pass in your own way.
Henry David Thoreau
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If anything ail a man, so that he does not perform his functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even,- for that is the seat of sympathy,-he forthwith sets about reforming the world.
Henry David Thoreau
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No man's thoughts are new, but the style of their expression is the never-failing novelty which cheers and refreshes men. If we were to answer the question, whether the mass of men, as we know them, talk as the standard authors and reviewers write, or rather as this man writes, we should say that he alone begins to write their language at all.
Henry David Thoreau
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Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man?... We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old.
Henry David Thoreau
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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
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These men, in teaching us how to die, have at the same time taught us how to live. If this man's acts and words do not create a revival, it will be the severest possible satire on the acts and words that do. It is the best news that America has ever heard.... How many a man who was lately contemplating suicide has now something to live for!
Henry David Thoreau
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The music of all creatures has to do with their loves, even of toads and frogs. Is it not the same with man?
Henry David Thoreau
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If it is asserted that civilization is a real advance in the condition of man,--and I think that it is, though only the wise improve their advantages,--it must be shown that it has produced better dwellings without making them more costly; and 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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That excitement about Kossuth, consider how characteristic, but superficial, it was!--only another kind of politics or dancing. Men were making speeches to him all over the country, but each expressed only the thought, or the want of thought, of the multitude. No man stood on truth. They were merely banded together, as usual one leaning on another, and all together on nothing.
Henry David Thoreau
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The same soil is good for men and for trees. A man's health requires as many acres of meadow to his prospect as his farm does loads of muck.
Henry David Thoreau
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The strongest wind cannot stagger a Spirit; it is a Spirit's breath. A just man's purpose cannot be split on any Grampus or material rock, but itself will split rocks till it succeeds.
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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He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something by behaviour as well as application.
Henry David Thoreau
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The universe expects every man to do his duty in his parallel of latitude.
Henry David Thoreau
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Even in civilized communities, the embryo man passes through the hunter stage of development.
Henry David Thoreau
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We say justly that the weak person is flat, for, like all flat substances, he does not stand in the direction of his strength, that is, on his edge, but affords a convenient surface to put upon. He slides all the way through life.... But the brave man is a perfect sphere, which cannot fall on its flat side and is equally strong every way.
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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A man had better starve at once than lose his innocence in the process of getting his bread.
Henry David Thoreau
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It becomes the moralist, too, to inquire what man might do to improve and beautify the system; what to make the stars shine more brightly, the sun more cheery and joyous, the moon more placid and content.
Henry David Thoreau
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It must be confessed that horses at present work too exclusively for men, rarely men for horses; and the brute degenerates in man's society.
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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The life of a wise man is most of all extemporaneous, for he lives out of an eternity which includes all time.
Henry David Thoreau
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Whose are the truly labored sentences? From the weak and flimsy periods of the politician and literary man, we are glad to turn even to the description of work, the simple record of the month's labor in the farmer's almanac, to restore our tone and spirits.
Henry David Thoreau
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What stuff is the man made of who is not coexistent in our thought with the purest and sublimest truth?
Henry David Thoreau
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Quote of the day
We owe something to extravagance, for thrift and adventure seldom go hand in hand.
Lady Randolph Churchill
Henry David Thoreau
Creative Commons
Born:
July 12, 1817
Died:
May 6, 1862
(aged 44)
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