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Did ever a man try heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no advantage in them - that it was a vain endeavor?

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
Trying
Sincerity
Men
Karma
Endeavor
Vain
Advantage
Truth
Find
Magnanimity
Ever
Heroism

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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Where there is a brave man, in the thickest of the fight, there is the post of honor.
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All men are children, and of one family.
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However mean your life is, meet it and live it.
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Bribed with a little sunlight and a few prismatic tints, we bless our Maker, and stave off his wrath with hymns.
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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?
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For an impenetrable shield, stand inside yourself
Henry David Thoreau
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If misery loves company, misery has company enough.
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Continued traveling is far from productive. It begins with wearing away the soles of the shoes, and making the feet sore, and erelong it will wear a man clean up, after making his heart sore into the bargain. I have observed that the afterlife of those who have traveled much is very pathetic.
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If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intent of doing you good, you should run for your life.
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Absolutely speaking, Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you is by no means a golden rule, but the best of current silver. An honest man would have but little occasion for it. It is golden not to have any rule at all in such a case.
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In my short experience of human life, the outward obstacles, if there were any such, have not been living men, but the institutions of the dead.
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A fact may blossom into a truth.
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It is the stars as not yet known to science that I would know, the stars which the lonely traveler knows.
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The hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men.
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For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly tack and veer and hold the middle of the pond, far from the sportsman... but what beside safety they got by sailing in the middle of Walden I do not know, unless they love its water for the same reason that I do.
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If we were always, indeed, getting our living, and regulating our lives according to the last and best mode we had learned, we should never be troubled with ennui.
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If you indulge in long periods, you must be sure to have a snapper at the end.
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.
Henry David Thoreau
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Truth never turns to rebuke falsehood her own straightforwardness is the severest correction.
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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 future, which is precisely the present moment to toe that line.
Henry David Thoreau