Quote

It will always be found that one flourishing institution exists and battens on another mouldering one. The Present itself is parasitic to this extent.

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
Extent
Exists
Institutions
Present
Found
Mouldering
Another
Parasitic
Always
Flourishing
Institution

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My facts shall be falsehoods to the common sense. I would so state facts that they shall be significant, shall be myths or mythologic. Facts which the mind perceived, thoughts which the body thought - with these I deal.
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I have heard a good many pretend that they are going to die or that they have died, for aught that I know. Nonsense! I'll defy them to do it. They have n't got life enough in them.... Only half a dozen or so have died since the world began.
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The way by which you may get money almost without exception leads downward.
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I would not have any one adopt my mode of living on any account.
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Commonly men will only be brave as their fathers were brave, or timid.
Henry David Thoreau
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We live but a fraction of our lives.
Henry David Thoreau
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Tough times don't last but tough people do. No matter how slow you go, you are still lapping everybody on the couch. Men are born to succeed, not fail.
Henry David Thoreau
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While the very inhabitants of New England were thus fabling about the country a hundred miles inland, which was a terra incognitato them,... Champlain, the first Governor of Canada,... had already gone to war against the Iroquois in their forest forts, and penetrated to the Great Lakes and wintered there, before a Pilgrim had heard of New England.
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What is the singing of birds, or any natural sound, compared with the voice of one we love.
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Left to herself, nature is always more or less civilized, and delights in a certain refinement but where the axe has encroached upon the edge of the forest, the dead and unsightly limbs of the pine, which she had concealed with green banks of verdure, are exposed to sight.
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Pray, for what do we move ever but to get rid of our furniture, our exuviæ at last to go from this world to another newly furnished, and leave this to be burned?
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That man is richest who's pleasure are cheapest.
Henry David Thoreau
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We must have infinite faith in each other. If we have not, we must never let it leak out that we have not.
Henry David Thoreau
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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.
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Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buries itself alive.
Henry David Thoreau
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There is absolutely no common sense, it is common non-sense.
Henry David Thoreau
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Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice.
Henry David Thoreau
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Long as I have lived, and many blasphemers as I have heard and seen, I have never yet heard or witnessed any direct and consciousblasphemy or irreverence but of indirect and habitual, enough. Where is the man who is guilty of direct and personal insolence to Him that made him?
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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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Every man is entitled to come to Cattle-Show, even a transcendentalist and for my part I am more interested in the men than in the cattle.
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