Quote

Drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your work with satisfaction - a work at which you would not be ashamed to invoke the muse.

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
Thinking
Wake
Drive
Clinch
Satisfaction
Faithfully
Night
Invoke
Home
Nail
Work
Muse
Would
Nails
Think
Ashamed

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For things to change, we must change.
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Heaven is not one of your fertile Ohio bottoms, you may depend on it.
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I fear that I have not got much to say about Canada, not having seen much what I got by going to Canada was a cold.
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All great enterprises are self-supporting.
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If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are translated?
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How shall we account for our pursuits, if they are original? We get the language with which to describe our various lives out of acommon mint.
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It is what a man thinks of himself that really determines his fate.
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We are a nation of politicians, concerned about the outmost defenses only of freedom. It is our children's children who may perchance be really free.
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Heal yourselves, doctors by God I live.
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The laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day.
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Do what you love. Know your own bone gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.
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We live but a fraction of our lives.
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One must maintain a little bittle of summer, even in the middle of winter.
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As yesterday and the historical ages are past, as the work of today is present, so some flitting perspectives and demi-experiencesof the life that is in nature are in time veritably future, or rather outside of time, perennial, young, divine, in the wind and rain which never die.
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A man's interest in a single bluebird is worth more than a complete but dry list of the fauna and flora of a town.
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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 least, like the life of the anchorite, be as impressive to behold as objects in a desert, a broken shaft or crumbling mound against a limitless horizon.
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Though my life is low, if my spirit looks upward habitually at an elevated angle, it is as if it were redeemed. When the desire to be better than we are is really sincere we are instantly elevated, and so far better already.
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It is desirable that a man be clad so simply that he can lay his hands on himself in the dark, and that he live in all respects so compactly and preparedly, that, if an enemy take the town, he can, like the old philosopher, walk out the gate empty-handed without anxiety.
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If you indulge in long periods, you must be sure to have a snapper at the end.
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