"I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government"
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Henry David Thoreau quotes (page 24 of 139)
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"The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them."
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"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation."
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"Man is the artificer of his own happiness."
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"It is difficult to begin without borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit your fellowmen to have an interest in your enterprise."
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"To be admitted to Nature's hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push aside the curtain."
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"The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready."
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"Whatever your sex or position, life is a battle in which you are to show your pluck, and woe be to the coward. Whether passed on a bed of sickness or a tented field, it is ever the same fair play and admits no foolish distinction. Despair and postponement are cowardice and defeat. Men were born to succeed, not to fail."
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"Every sentence is the result of a long probation."
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"Every child begins the world again."
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"I have climbed several higher mountains without guide or path, and have found, as might be expected, that it takes only more time and patience commonly than to travel the smoothest highway."
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"The poet's body even is not fed like other men's, but he sometimes tastes the genuine nectar and ambrosia of the gods, and lives adivine life. By the healthful and invigorating thrills of inspiration his life is preserved to a serene old age."
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"I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life."
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"A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener."
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"I felt a positive yearning toward one bush this afternoon. There was a match found for me at last. I fell in love with a shrub oak."
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"Nature, even when she is scant and thin outwardly, satisfies us still by the assurance of a certain generosity at the roots."
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"This world has many rings, like Saturn, and we live now on the outmost of them all. None can say deliberately that he inhabits thesame sphere, or is contemporary, with the flower which his hands have plucked, and though his feet may seem to crush it, inconceivable spaces and ages separate them, and perchance there is no danger that he will hurt it."
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"When I consider how, after sunset, the stars come out gradually in troops from behind the hills and woods, I confess that I could not have contrived a more curious and inspiring sight."
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"While some men believe in the infinite, some ponds will be thought to be bottomless."
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"Philosophy, having crept clinging to the rocks so far, puts out its feelers many ways in vain."
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