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Henry David Thoreau -
Walden (1854)
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I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.
Henry David Thoreau
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It is not necessary that a man should earn his living from the sweat of his brow unless he sweats easier than I do.
Henry David Thoreau
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If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours … In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.
Henry David Thoreau
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They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar.
Henry David Thoreau
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Let us first be as simple and well as Nature ourselves, dispel the clouds which hang over our brows, and take up a little life into our pores. Do not stay to be an overseer of the poor, but endeavor to become one of the worthies of the world.
Henry David Thoreau
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As for doing good, that is one of the professions which are full.
Henry David Thoreau
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Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.
Henry David Thoreau
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Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost.
Henry David Thoreau
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Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
Henry David Thoreau
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There never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be.
Henry David Thoreau
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The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.
Henry David Thoreau
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The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles! What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment!
Henry David Thoreau
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I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech-tree, or a yellow-birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines.
Henry David Thoreau
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The government of the world I live in was not framed, like that of Britain, in after-dinner conversations over the wine.
Henry David Thoreau
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It is an interesting question, how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.
Henry David Thoreau
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.. men remain in their present low and primitive condition; but if they should feel the influence of the spring of springs arousing them, they would of necessity rise to a higher and more ethereal life.
Henry David Thoreau
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I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
Henry David Thoreau
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I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.
Henry David Thoreau
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If the day and night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal — that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself.
Henry David Thoreau
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A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips; — not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself.
Henry David Thoreau
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I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
Henry David Thoreau
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Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.
Henry David Thoreau
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I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.
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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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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Quote of the day
Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor.
Ogden Nash
Henry David Thoreau
Creative Commons
Born:
July 12, 1817
Died:
May 6, 1862
(aged 44)
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