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You must get your living by loving. But as it is said of the merchants that ninety-seven in a hundred fail, so the life of men generally, tried by this standard, is a failure, and bankruptcy may be surely prophesied.

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
Living
Loving
Prophesied
May
Standards
Merchants
Must
Seven
Bankruptcy
Men
Tried
Ninety
Life
Labor
Standard
Failure
Surely
Failing
Generally
Hundred
Fail

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One can hardly imagine a more healthful employment, or one more favorable to contemplation and the observation of nature.
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There is all the poetry in the world in a name. It is a poem which the mass of men hear and read. What is poetry in the common sense, but a hearing of such jingling names? I want nothing better than a good word. The name of a thing may easily be more than the thing itself to me.
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Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice.
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We are made happy when reason can discover no occasion for it. The memory of some past moments is more persuasive than the experience of present ones. There have been visions of such breadth and brightness that these motes were invisible in their light.
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So easy is it, though many housekeepers doubt it, to establish new and better customs in the place of the old.
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But what is quackery? It is commonly an attempt to cure the diseases of a man by addressing his body alone. There is need of a physician who shall minister to both soul and body at once, that is, to man. Now he falls between two stools.
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The great poem must have the stamp of greatness as well as its essence.
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The student may read Homer or Æschylus in the Greek without danger of dissipation or luxuriousness, for it implies that hein some measure emulate their heroes, and consecrate morning hours to their pages.
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The dinner even is only the parable of a dinner, commonly.
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I saw a muskrat come out of a hole in the ice ... While I am looking at him, I am thinking what he is thinking of me. He is a different sort of man, that's all.
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All misfortune is but a stepping stone to fortune.
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I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.
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If a man constantly aspires is he not elevated?
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Farmers are respectable and interesting to me in proportion as they are poor.
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I would give all the wealth of the world, and all the deeds of all the heroes, for one true vision.
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This fond reiteration of the oldest expressions of truth by the latest posterity, content with slightly and religiously retouchingthe old material, is the most impressive proof of a common humanity.
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Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.
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Every ambitious would-be empire, clarions it abroad that she is conquering the world to bring it peace, security and freedom, and it is sacrificing her sons only for the most noble and humanitarian purposes. That is a lie and it is an ancient lie, yet generations still rise and believe it.
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If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.
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Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.
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