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Henry David Thoreau -
Walden (1854)
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All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be.
Henry David Thoreau
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It is never too late to give up our prejudices.
Henry David Thoreau
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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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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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Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.
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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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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And the cost of a thing, it will be remembered, is the amount of life it requires to be exchanged for it.
Henry David Thoreau
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In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and the future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.
Henry David Thoreau
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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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To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.
Henry David Thoreau
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When I had mapped the pond... I laid a rule on the map lengthwise, and then breadthwise, and found, to my surprise, that the line of greatest length intersected the line of greatest breadth exactly at the point of greatest depth.
Henry David Thoreau
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While men believe in the infinite, some ponds will be thought to be bottomless.
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 serfs.
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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Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing.
Henry David Thoreau
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There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.
Henry David Thoreau
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God is alone,-but the devil, he is far from being alone; he sees a great deal of company; he is legion.
Henry David Thoreau
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We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.
Henry David Thoreau
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If i repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. what demon possessed me that i behaved so well?
Henry David Thoreau
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While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.
Henry David Thoreau
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Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted or enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles.
Henry David Thoreau
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We should distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.
Henry David Thoreau
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We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.
Henry David Thoreau
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Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.
Henry David Thoreau
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Quote of the day
Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Henry David Thoreau
Creative Commons
Born:
July 12, 1817
Died:
May 6, 1862
(aged 44)
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