"Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. Why, nature is but another name for health."
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Quote collection
Henry David Thoreau quotes (page 132 of 139)
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"I have learned that the swiftest traveller is he that goes afoot."
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"As the least drop of wine tinges the whole goblet, so the least particle of truth colors our whole life."
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"There must be the... generating force of Love behind every effort destined to be successful."
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"As if there were safety in stupidity alone"
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"It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work."
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"Great God, I ask thee for no meaner pelf Than that I may not disappoint myself, That in my action I may soar as high As I can now discern with this clear eye."
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"Blessed are they who never read a newspaper, for they shall see Nature, and through her, God."
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"The mission of men there seems to be, like so many busy demons, to drive the forest all out of the country, from every solitary beaver swamp and mountain-side, as soon as possible."
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"He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something by behaviour as well as application."
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"Writing may be either the record of a deed or a deed. It is nobler when it is a deed."
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"Every ambitious would-be empire, clarions it abroad that she is conquering the world to bring it peace, security and freedom, and it is sacrificing her sons only for the most noble and humanitarian purposes. That is a lie; and it is an ancient lie, yet generations still rise and believe it."
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"One little bird not larger than a sparrow, it may have been a Phalarope, would alight on the turbulent surface where the breakers were five or six feet high, and float buoyantly there like a duck, cunningly taking to its wings and lifting itself a few feet through the air over the foaming crest of each breaker, but sometimes outriding safely a considerable billow which hid it some seconds, when its instinct told it that it would not break. It was a little creature thus to sport with the ocean, but it was as perfect a success in its way as the breakers in theirs."
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"Eastward I go only by force; but westward I go free."
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"There are two classes of authors: the one write the history of their times, the other their biography."
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"It is impossible to give a soldier a good education without making him a deserter. His natural foe is the government that drills him."
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"And pray what more can a reasonable man desire, in peaceful times, in ordinary noons, than a sufficient number of ears of green sweet corn boiled, with the addition of salt?"
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"The heroes and discoverers have found true more than was previously believed, only when they were expecting and dreaming of something more than their contemporaries dreamed of, or even themselves discovered, that is, when they were in a frame of mind fitted to behold the truth. Referred to the world's standard, they are always insane. Even savages have indirectly surmised as much."
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"In sane moments we regard only the facts, the case that is."
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"The frontiers are not east or west, north or south; but wherever a man fronts a fact, though that fact be a neighbor, there is anunsettled wilderness between him and Canada, between him and the setting sun, or, farther still, between him and it. Let him build himself a log house with the bark on where he is, fronting IT, and wage there an Old French war for seven or seventy years, with Indians and Rangers, or whatever else may come between him and the reality, and save his scalp if he can."
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