"The hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men."
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Henry David Thoreau quotes (page 23 of 139)
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"No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof."
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"Mine was, as it were, the connecting link between wild and cultivated fields; as some states are civilized, and others half-civilized, and others savage or barbarous, so my field was, though not in a bad sense, a half-cultivated field. They were beans cheerfully returning to their wild and primitive state that I cultivated, and my hoe played the Ranz des Vaches for them."
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"If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure, that, for me, there would be nothing left worth living for."
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"We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success."
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"Give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth."
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"Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw."
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"The music of all creatures has to do with their loves, even of toads and frogs. Is it not the same with man?"
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"I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper."
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"Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something. All fables, indeed, have their morals; but the innocent enjoy the story. Let nothing come between you and the light. Respect men and brothers only. When you travel to the Celestial City, carry no letter of introduction. When you knock, ask to see God"
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"I fear that we are such gods or demigods only as fauns and satyrs, the divine allied to beasts, the creatures of appetite, and that, to some extent, our very life is our disgrace."
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"Thought is the sculptor who can create the person you want to be."
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"You cannot hear music and noise at the same time."
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"It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts."
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"The biggest happiness is when at the end of the year you feel better than at the beginning"
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"If the day and night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal - that is your success."
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"My profession is to be always on the alert to find God in nature, to know his lurking-places, to attend all the oratorios, the operas in nature."
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"Statesmen and legislators, standing so completely within the institution, never distinctly and nakedly behold it. They speak of moving society, but they have no resting-place without it. They may be men of a certain experience and discrimination, and have no doubt invented ingenious and even useful systems, for which we sincerely thank them; but all their wit and usefulness lie within certain not very wide limits. They are wont to forget that the world is not governed by policy and expediency."
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"I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe — "That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient."
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"Nature refuses to sympathize with our sorrow. She seems not to have provided for, but by a thousand contrivances against it."
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