"Who hears the fishes when they cry?"
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Quote collection
Henry David Thoreau quotes (page 122 of 139)
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"The traveler must be born again on the road, and earn a passport from the elements."
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"Many are concerned about the monuments of the West and the East -- to know who built them. For my part, I should like to know who in those days did not build them -- who were above such trifling."
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"There are sure to be two prescriptions diametrically opposite."
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"Only lovers know the value and magnanimity of truth."
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"If there is nothing new on the earth, still the traveler always has a resource in the skies. They are constantly turning a new page to view. The wind sets the types on this blue ground, and the inquiring may always read a new truth there."
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"And so the seasons went rolling on into summer, as one rambles into higher and higher grass."
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"We fritter away our energy and creativity . . . we get bogged down in the thick of thin things."
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"However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house."
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"Real power is measured by how much you can let things be."
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"In what concerns you much, do not think that you have companions: know that you are alone in the world."
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"Wealth cannot purchase any great private solace or convenience. Riches are only the means of sociality."
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"Truth never turns to rebuke falsehood; her own straightforwardness is the severest correction."
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"It is not when I am going to meet him, but when I am just turning away and leaving him alone, that I discover what God is. I say, God. I am not sure that that is the name. You will know what I mean."
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"We inspire friendship in men when we have contracted friendship with the gods."
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"The orator puts off his individuality, and is then most eloquent when most silent. He listens while he speaks, and is a hearer along with his audience."
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"What other words, we may almost ask, are memorable and worthy to be repeated than those which love has inspired? It is wonderful that they were ever uttered. They are few and rare indeed, but, like a strain of music, they are incessantly repeated and modulated by the memory. All other words crumble off with the stucco which overlies the heart. We should not dare to repeat these now aloud. We are not competent to hear them at all times."
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"I have not yet learned to live, that I can see, and I fear that I shall not very soon. I find, however, that in the long run things correspond to my original idea,--that they correspond to nothing else so much; and thus a man may really be a true prophet without any great exertion. The day is never so dark, nor the night even, but that the laws at least of light still prevail, and so may make it light in our minds if they are open to the truth."
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"The front aspect of great thoughts can only be enjoyed by those who stand on the side whence they arrive."
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"Fishermen, hunters, woodchoppers, and others, spending their lives in the fields and woods, in a peculiar sense a part of Nature themselves, are often in a more favorable mood for observing her, in the intervals of their pursuits, than philosophers or poets even, who approach her with expectation. She is not afraid to exhibit herself to them."
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