"A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend."
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Henry David Thoreau quotes (page 22 of 139)
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"Do we call this the land of the free? What is it to be free from King George the Fourth and continue the slaves of prejudice? What is it to be born free and equal, and not to live? What is the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom?"
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"Rescue the drowning and tie your shoestrings."
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"Routine is a ground to stand on, a wall to retreat to; we cannot draw on our boots without bracing ourselves against it."
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"White Pond and Walden are great crystals on the surface of the earth, Lakes of Light.... They are too pure to have a market value;they contain no muck. How much more beautiful than our lives, how much more transparent than our characters are they! We never learned meanness of them."
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"Sweep away the clutter of things that complicate our lives."
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"There will never be a really free and enlightened state until the state comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived."
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"We are constantly invited to be who we are."
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"March to the beat of your own drummer."
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"A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom."
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"O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it, for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment."
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"To be a philosopher... is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically."
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"Methinks that the moment my legs began to move, my thoughts began to flow."
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"This life is not for complaint, but for satisfaction."
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"Enthusiasm is a supernatural serenity."
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"While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings."
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"No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America. They are rare in the history of the world. There are orators, politicians, and eloquent men, by the thousand; but the speaker has not yet opened his mouth to speak who is capable of settling the much-vexed questions of the day. We love eloquence for its own sake, and not for any truth which it may utter, or any heroism it may inspire. Our legislators have not yet learned the comparative value of free trade and of freedom, of union, and of rectitude, to a nation."
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"I saw a delicate flower had grown up two feet high between the horses' feet and the wheel-track. Which Dakin's and Maynard's wagons had Passed over many a time. An inch more to the right or left had sealed its fate, Or an inch higher. Yet it lived and flourished, As much as if it had a thousand acres Of untrodden space around it, and never Knew the danger it incurred. It did not borrow trouble, nor invite an Evil fate by apprehending it."
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"Every man who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best condition, has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food"
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"The keeping of bees is like the direction of sunbeams."
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