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The philanthropist too often surrounds mankind with the remembrance of his own cast- off griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy. We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease, and take care that this does not spread by contagion.

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
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Care
Despair
Surround
Contagion
Take
Grief
Sympathy
Philanthropist
Disease
Calls
Griefs
Courage
Cast
Surrounds
Mankind
Casts
Impart
Health
Ease
Remembrance
Often
Atmosphere
Philanthropy
Doe
Spread
Bravery

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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We admire Chaucer for his sturdy English wit.... But though it is full of good sense and humanity, it is not transcendent poetry.For picturesque description of persons it is, perhaps, without a parallel in English poetry yet it is essentially humorous, as the loftiest genius never is.
Henry David Thoreau
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As I love nature, as I love singing birds...I love thee, my friend.
Henry David Thoreau
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I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a multitude? They can only force me who obey a higher law than I.... I do not hear of men being forced to live this way or that by masses of men. What sort of life were that to live?
Henry David Thoreau
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To the virtuous man, the universe is the only sanctum sanctorum, and the penetralia of the temple are the broad noon of his existence.
Henry David Thoreau
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It is but too easy to establish another durable and harmonious routine. Immediately all parts of nature consent to it. Only make something to take the place of something, and men will behave as if it was the very thing they wanted.
Henry David Thoreau
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By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent.
Henry David Thoreau
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There is an orientalism in the most restless pioneer, and the farthest west is but the farthest east.
Henry David Thoreau
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All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy.
Henry David Thoreau
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Those who, while they disapprove of the character and measures of a government, yield to it their allegiance and support are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most serious obstacles to reform.
Henry David Thoreau
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A simple woman down in Tyngsborough, at whose house I once stopped to get a draught of water, when I said, recognizing the bucket, that I had stopped there nine years before for the same purpose, asked if I was not a traveler, supposing that I had been traveling ever since, and had now come round again.
Henry David Thoreau
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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.
Henry David Thoreau
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That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.
Henry David Thoreau
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Verily, chemistry is not a splitting of hairs when you have got half a dozen raw Irishmen in the laboratory.
Henry David Thoreau
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. . . we should be men first, and subjects afterward.
Henry David Thoreau
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All questions rely on the present for their solution. Time measures nothing but itself. The word that is written may be postponed,but not that on the lip. If this is what the occasion says, let the occasion say it.
Henry David Thoreau
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Could slavery suggest a more complete servility than some of these journals exhibit? Is there any dust which their conduct does not lick, and make fouler still with its slime?
Henry David Thoreau
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Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity is open.
Henry David Thoreau
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A man cannot wheedle nor overawe his Genius. It requires to be conciliated by nobler conduct than the world demands or can appreciate.
Henry David Thoreau
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I sometimes despair of getting anything quite simple and honest done in this world by the help of men. They would have to be passed through a powerful press first, to squeeze their old notions out of them, so that they would not soon get upon their legs again.
Henry David Thoreau
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Comparatively, we can excuse any offense against the heart, but not against the imagination. The imagination knows--nothing escapes its glance from out its eyry--and it controls the breast.
Henry David Thoreau