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Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion.

Henry David Thoreau

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Henry David Thoreau
Age: 44 †
Born: 1817
Born: July 12
Died: 1862
Died: May 6
Abolitionist
Author
Autobiographer
Diarist
Ecologist
Environmentalist
Essayist
Naturalist
Philosopher
Poet
Translator
Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Compared
Anxiety
Private
Confidence
Weak
Opinion
Public
Tyrant
Political
Tyrants

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The best way to correct a mistake is to make it right.
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Where is the unexplored land but in our own untried enterprises? To an adventurous spirit any place--London, New York, Worcester, or his own yard--is unexplored land, to seek which Frémont and Kane travel so far. To a sluggish and defeated spirit even the Great Basin and the Polaris are trivial places.
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What is the singing of birds, or any natural sound, compared with the voice of one we love.
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I once found a kernel of corn in the middle of a deep wood by Walden, tucked in behind a lichen on a pine, about as high as my head, either by a crow or a squirrel. It was a mile at least from any corn-field.
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How many things are now at loose ends! Who knows which way the wind will blow tomorrow?
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We discover a new world every time we see the earth again after it has been covered for a season with snow.
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That grand old poem called Winter
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We are superior to the joy we experience.
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How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual friends, that we might go and meet their ideal cousins.
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We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.
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Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.
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Let your walks now be a little more adventurous.
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A man cannot wheedle nor overawe his Genius. It requires to be conciliated by nobler conduct than the world demands or can appreciate.
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If it is the result of a pure love, there can be nothing sensual in marriage. Chastity is something positive, not negative. It isthe virtue of the married especially. All lusts or base pleasures must give place to loftier delights. They who meet as superior beings cannot perform the deeds of inferior ones.
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Dissent without action is consent.
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The chickadee and nuthatch are more inspiring society than statesmen and philosophers, and we shall return to these last as to more vulgar companions.
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In society you will not find health, but in nature. Unless our feet at least stood in the midst of nature, all our faces would bepale and livid. Society is always diseased, and the best is the most so.
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In accumulating property for ourselves or our posterity, in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even, we are mortal but in dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change nor accident.
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I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.
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How can any man be weak who dares to be at all?
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