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Your method of traveling, especially,—to live along the road, citizens of the world, without haste or petty plans,—I have often proposed t...

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We think that we can change our clothes only.

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We falsely attribute to men a determined character - putting together all their yesterdays - and averaging them - we presume we know them. Pity the man who has character to support - it is worse than a large family - he is the silent poor indeed.

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Why should not our whole life and its scenery be actually thus fair and distinct? All our lives want a suitable background. They should at lea...

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You may raise enough money to tunnel a mountain, but you cannot raise money enough to hire a man who is minding his own business.

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The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it. Life

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We should omit a main attraction in these books, if we said nothing of their humor. Of this indispensable pledge of sanity, without some leave...

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Even the poor student studies and is taught only political economy, while that economy of living which is synonymous with philosophy is not ev...

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This, our respectable daily life, on which the man of common sense, the Englishman of the world, stands so squarely, and on which our institut...

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However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do want society.

more quotes from Henry David Thoreau

I believe that what so saddens the reformer is not his sympathy with his fellows in distress, but, though he be the holiest son of God, is his private ail. Let this be righted, let the spring come to him, the morning rise over his couch, and he will forsake his generous companions without apology.

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To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?

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The ocean is a wilderness reaching round the globe, wilder than a Bengal jungle, and fuller of monsters, washing the very wharves of our cities and the gardens of our sea-side residences.

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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 wi...

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As for the sacred Scriptures, or Bibles of mankind, who in this town can tell me even their titles? Most men do not know that any nation but t...

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Fresh curls spring from the baldest brow. There is nothing inorganic.

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However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not bad... it looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults, even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may have perhaps so

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Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature --if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you --know that the morning and spring of your life are past. Thus may you feel your pulse.

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All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy we reason from our hands to our head.

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We are not a religious people, but we are a nation of politicians. We do not care for the Bible, but we do care for the newspaper. At any meet...

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