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There is something servile in the habit of seeking after a law which we may obey. We may study the laws of matter at and for our convenience, but a successful life knows no law.
Henry David Thoreau
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Henry David Thoreau
Age: 44 †
Born: 1817
Born: July 12
Died: 1862
Died: May 6
Abolitionist
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
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A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.
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Every oak tree started out as a couple of nuts who stood their ground.
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Give me a Wildness whose glance no civilization can endure.
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If we dealt only with the false and dishonest, we should at last forget how to speak truth.
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Yet the New Testament treats of man and man's so-called spiritual affairs too exclusively, and is too constantly moral and personal, to alone content me, who am not interested solely in man's religious or moral nature, or in man even.
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It is remarkable that among all the preachers there are so few moral teachers. The prophets are employed in excusing the ways of men.
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Hate can pardon more than love.
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Especially the transcendental philosophy needs the leaven of humor to render it light and digestible.
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Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.
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The press is, almost without exception, corrupt.
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There is not one kind of food for all men. You must and you will feed those faculties which you exercise. The laborer whose body is weary does not require the same food with the scholar whose brain is weary.
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Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads.
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There are many skillful apprentices, but few master workmen.
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A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of any prince.
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If however the law is so promulgated that it of necessity makes you an agent of injustices against another, then I say to you ... break the law.
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I am a majority of one.
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Any man knows when he is justified, and all the wits in the world cannot enlighten him on that point. The murderer always knows that he is justly punished but when a government takes the life of a man without the consent of his conscience, it is an audacious government, and is taking a step towards its own dissolution.
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The hounding of a dog pursuing a fox or other animal in the horizon may have first suggested the notes of the hunting-horn to alternate with and relieve the lungs of the dog. This natural bugle long resounded in the woods of the ancient world before the horn was invented.
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Today...the bluebirds, old and young, have revisited their box, as if they would fain repeat the summer without intervention of winter, if Nature would let them.
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