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
Present
Found
Mouldering
Another
Parasitic
Always
Flourishing
Institution
Extent
Exists
Institutions

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I cannot fish without falling a little in self-respect...always when I have done I feel it would have been better if I had not fished.
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Rise free from care before the dawn and seek adventure. Let the noon find you by other lakes, and the night overtake thee everywhere at home. There are no larger fields than these, no worthier games than may here be played.
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Water is a pioneer which the settler follows, taking advantage of its improvements.
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Duty is one and invariable it requires no impossibilities, nor can it ever be disregarded with impunity.
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I want the flower and fruit of a man that some fragrance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse.
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The world rests on principles.
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Law never made men a whit more just.
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The only people who ever get anyplace interesting are the people who get lost.
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The past is only so heroic as we see it. It is the canvas on which our idea of heroism is painted, and so, in one sense, the dim prospectus of our future field.
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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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Real power is measured by how much you can let things be.
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Morning brings back the heroic ages.
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As a true patriot, I should be ashamed to think that Adam in paradise was more favorably situated on the whole than the backwoodsman in this country.
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At present the globe goes with a shattered constitution in its orbit.... No doubt the simple powers of nature, properly directed by man, would make it healthy and a paradise as the laws of man's own constitution but wait to be obeyed, to restore him to health and happiness.
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Work your vein till it is exhausted, or conducts you to a broader one.
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There are two classes of men called poets. The one cultivates life, the other art,... one satisfies hunger, the other gratifies the palate.
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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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I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one.
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