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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.

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
Though
Easy
Place
Change
Housekeepers
Better
Establish
Many
Customs
Tradition
Doubt

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The husbandman is always a better Greek than the scholar is prepared to appreciate, and the old custom still survives, while antiquarians and scholars grow gray in commemorating it.
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We must have infinite faith in each other.
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Music is the sound of the universal laws promulgated. It is the only assured tone. There are in it such strains as far surpass anyman's faith in the loftiness of his destiny. Things are to be learned which it will be worth the while to learn.
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They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar.
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This life we live is a strange dream, and I don't believe at all any account men give of it.
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Time is like a handful of sand - the tighter you grasp it, the faster it runs through your fingers.
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To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.
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The philosopher's conception of things will, above all, be truer than other men's, and his philosophy will subordinate all the circumstances of life. To live like a philosopher is to live, not foolishly, like other men, but wisely and according to universal laws.
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I don't like the city better, the more I see it, but worse. I am ashamed of my eyes that behold it. It is a thousand times meanerthan I could have imagined.... The pigs in the street are the most respectable part of the population.
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The dinner even is only the parable of a dinner, commonly.
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The sea, vast and wild as it is, bears thus the waste and wrecks of human art to its remotest shore. There is no telling what it may not vomit up.
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Do not entertain doubts if they are not agreeable to you.
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A sufficiently great and generous trust could never be abused.
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Let the beautiful laws prevail. Let us not weary ourselves by resisting them.
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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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It is as hard to see one's self as to look backwards without turning around.
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What great interval is there between him who is caught in Africa and made a plantation slave of in the South, and him who is caught in New England and made a Unitarian minister of?
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