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Men go to a fire for entertainment. When I see how eagerly men will run to a fire, whether in warm or in cold weather, by day or by night, dragging an engine at their heels, I'm astonished to perceive how good a purpose the level of excitement is made to serve.

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
Cold
Heels
Good
Levels
Excitement
Men
Fire
Perceive
Weather
Eagerly
Purpose
Entertainment
Dragging
Whether
Warm
Astonished
Running
Serve
Engine
Night
Level
Engines
Made

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I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it.
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If misery loves company, misery has company enough.
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The Library is a wilderness of books.
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What is morality but immemorial custom? Conscience is the chief of conservatives.
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To inherit property is not to be born - it is to be still-born, rather.
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The most alive is the wildest.
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Whatever has not come under the sway of man is wild. In this sense original and independent men are wild - not tamed and broken by society.
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All men are really most attracted by the beauty of plain speech, and they even write in a florid style in imitation of this. Theyprefer to be misunderstood rather than to come short of its exuberance.
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It is pitiful when a man bears a name for convenience merely, who has earned neither name nor fame.
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Great God, I ask thee for no meaner pelf Than that I may not disappoint myself, That in my action I may soar as high As I can now discern with this clear eye.
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The golden mean in ethics, as in physics, is the centre of the system and that about which all revolve, and though to a distant and plodding planet it be an uttermost extreme, yet one day, when that planet's year is completed, it will be found to be central.
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The pleasures of the intellect are permanent, the pleasures of the heart are transitory.
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Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows.
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However much we admire the orator's occasional bursts of eloquence, the noblest written words are commonly as far behind or abovethe fleeting spoken language as the firmament with its stars is behind the clouds.
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The great art of life is how to turn the surplus life of the soul into life for the body.
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Instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them.
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I think we may safely trust a good deal more than we do.
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The doctors are all agreed that I am suffering for want of society. Was never a case like it. First, I did not know that I was suffering at all. Secondly, as an Irishman might say, I had thought it was indigestion of the society I got.
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What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.
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