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Politics is the gizzard of society, full of grit and gravel, and the two political parties are its opposite halves - sometimes split into quarters - which grind on each other. Not only individuals but states have thus a confirmed dyspepsia.

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
Society
Parties
Halves
Half
Opposite
Gravel
Individual
Opposites
Grit
Political
Individuals
Confirmed
Two
Thus
Grind
States
Full
Split
Sometimes
Politics
Splits
Party
Quarters
Dyspepsia

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When the first light dawned on the earth, and the birds awoke, and the brave river was heard rippling confidently seaward, and the nimble early rising wind rustled the oak leaves about our tent, all people, having reinforced their bodies and their souls with sleep, and cast aside doubt and fear, were invited to unattempted adventures.
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It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such.
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Those things for which the most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is an important item in the term bill, while for the far more valuable education which he gets by associating with the most cultivated of his contemporaries no charge is made.
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Go not to the object let the object come to you.
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The community has no bribe that will tempt a wise man.
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Who could believe in the prophecies ... that the world would end this summer, while one milkweed with faith matured its seeds.
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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 will be the severest possible satire on the acts and words that do. It is the best news that America has ever heard.... How many a man who was lately contemplating suicide has now something to live for!
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The most attractive sentences are, perhaps, not the wisest, but the surest and roundest. They are spoken firmly and conclusively,as if the speaker had a right to know what he says, and if not wise, they have at least been well learned.
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Perfect sincerity and transparency make a great part of beauty, as in dewdrops, lakes, and diamonds.
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I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one.
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It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.
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Nature spontaneously keeps us well. Do not resist her!
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You must ascend a mountain to learn your relation to matter, and so to your own body, for it is at home there, though you are not.
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But the divinest poem, or the life of a great man, is the severest satire.... The greater the genius, the keener the edge of the satire.
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Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.
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Despair and postponement are cowardice and defeat. Men were born to succeed, not to fail.
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The man who does not betake himself at once and desperately to sawing is called a loafer, though he may be knocking at the doors of heaven all the while.
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The mass never comes up to the standard of its best member, but on the contrary degrades itself to a level with the lowest.
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