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What is morality but immemorial custom? Conscience is the chief of conservatives.

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
Chiefs
Ethics
Morality
Conscience
Immemorial
Custom
Conservatives
Customs
Chief

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Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.
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Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house.
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I do not know what right I have to so much happiness, but rather hold it in reserve till the time of my desert.
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If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined...
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The gods cannot misunderstand, man cannot explain.
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It would surpass the powers of a well man nowadays to take up his bed and walk, and I should certainly advise a sick one to lay down his bed and run.
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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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Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion.
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To watch this crystal globe just sent from heaven to associate with me. While these clouds and this somber drizzling weather shut all in, we two draw nearer and know one another.
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The laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day.
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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 there is any hell more unprincipled than our rulers, and we, the ruled, I feel curious to see it.
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This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! I am awaked almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. It interrupts my dreams. There is no sabbath. It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work.
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I have myself to respect, but to myself I am not amiable but my friend is my amiableness personified.
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I please myself with imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor.
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There is a patent office at the seat of government of the universe, whose managers are as much interested in the dispersion of seeds as anybody at Washington can be, and their operations are infinitely more extensive and regular.
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