"Open all your pores and bathe in all the tides of nature, in all her streams and oceans, at all seasons."
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Quote collection
Henry David Thoreau quotes (page 56 of 139)
2.8K quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"All men are children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the morning."
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"No man ever followed his genius till it misled him."
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"Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new."
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"Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve."
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"There is but one stage for the peasant and the actor."
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"Some are reputed sick and some are not. It often happens that the sicker man is the nurse to the sounder."
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"There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages."
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"Only he is successful in his business who makes that pursuit which affords him the highest pleasure sustain him."
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"May we so love as never to have occasion to repent of our love!"
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"How can any man be weak who dares to be at all?"
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"Faith never makes a confession."
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"I did not know that we had ever quarreled."
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"The laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day."
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"Poverty ... It is life near the bone, where it is sweetest."
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"Rivers must have been the guides which conducted the footsteps of the first travelers. They are the constant lure, when they flow by our doors, to distant enterprise and adventure, and, by a natural impulse, the dwellers on their banks will at length accompany their currents to the lowlands of the globe, or explore at their invitation the interior of continents."
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"How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual friends, that we might go and meet their ideal cousins."
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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 behavior as well as by application. It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws. The study of geometry is a petty and idle exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger system than the starry one. Mathematics should be mixed not only with physics but with ethics; that is mixed mathematics. The fact which interests us most is the life of the naturalist. The purest science is still biographical."
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"The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way."
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"If we were left solely to the wordy wit of legislators in Congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonal experience and the effectual complaints of the people, America would not long retain her rank among the nations."
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