quotes from classic

Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.

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Ah! I have penetrated to those meadows on the morning of many a first spring day, jumping from hummock to hummock, from willow root to willow ...

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Many go fishing without knowing it is fish they are after.

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Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. The very simplicity and nakedness of man's life in the primitive ages imply this advantage, at least, that they left him still but a sojourner in nature. To be awake is to be alive. Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. Every man is a builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them. Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

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I was more independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment.

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The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. Life

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They should not play life, or study it merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning ...

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Those services which the community will most readily pay for, it is most disagreeable to render.

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The island seemed deserted to-day, yet I observed some new houses among the weather-stained ones, as if the tribe still had a design upon life...

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He was a superior man. He did not value his bodily life in comparison with ideal things. He did not recognize unjust human laws, but resisted ...

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So near along life's stream are the fountains of innocence and youth making fertile its sandy margin; and the voyageur will do well to repleni...

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Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every shrub and tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit.

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In the love of narrow souls I make many short voyages but in vain - I find no sea room - but in great souls I sail before the wind without a watch, and never reach the shore.

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Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain. Nature

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It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are... than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.

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The best thing a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those schemes which he entertained when he was poor.

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Time is but a stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it, but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.

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I saw deep in the eyes of the animals the human soul look out upon me. I saw where it was born deep down under feathers and fur, or condemned for a while to roam four-footed among the brambles I caught the clinging mute glance of the prisoner and swore that I would be faithful.

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There have been heroes for whom this world seemed expressly prepared, as if creation had at last succeeded; whose daily life was the stuff of ...

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How vigilant we are! determined not to live by faith if we can avoid it; all the day long on the alert, at night we unwillingly say our prayer...

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