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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.

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
Hours
Student
Read
Greek
May
Measure
Consecrate
Without
Pages
Dissipation
Hero
Homer
Students
Emulate
Danger
Implies
Morning
Heroes

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me.
Henry David Thoreau
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When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality.
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I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks.
Henry David Thoreau
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We cannot see anything until we are possessed with the idea of it, take it into our heads,--and then we can hardly see anything else.
Henry David Thoreau
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Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge college is as solitary as a dervis in the desert.
Henry David Thoreau
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Are you in want of amusement nowadays? Then play a little at the game of getting a living. There was never anything equal to it. Do it temperately, though, and don't sweat.
Henry David Thoreau
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Some have asked if the stock of men could not be improved,--if they could not be bred as cattle. Let Love be purified, and all therest will follow. A pure love is thus, indeed, the panacea for all the ills of the world.
Henry David Thoreau
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Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.
Henry David Thoreau
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Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, and hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance.
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.
Henry David Thoreau
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No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes: yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience.
Henry David Thoreau
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Despair and postponement are cowardice and defeat. Men were born to succeed, not to fail.
Henry David Thoreau
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Biography, too, is liable to the same objection it should be autobiography. Let us not, as the Germans advise, endeavor to go abroad and vex our bowels that we may be somebody else to explain him. If I am not I, who will be?
Henry David Thoreau
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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?
Henry David Thoreau
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All fables, indeed, have their morals but the innocent enjoy the story.
Henry David Thoreau
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If private men are obliged to perform the offices of government, to protect the weak and dispense justice, then the government becomes only a hired man, or clerk, to perform menial or indifferent services.
Henry David Thoreau
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Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them.
Henry David Thoreau
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I did not know that we had ever quarreled.
Henry David Thoreau
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The repugnance to animal food is not the effect of experience, but is an instinct. It appeared more beautiful to live low and farehard in many respects and though I never did so, I went far enough to please my imagination.
Henry David Thoreau
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The true finish is the work of time, and the use to which a thing is put. The elements are still polishing the pyramids.
Henry David Thoreau