"It's only by forgetting yourself that you draw near to God."
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Quote collection
Henry David Thoreau quotes (page 60 of 139)
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"The press is, almost without exception, corrupt."
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"It is true, I never assisted the sun materially in his rising, but doubt not, it was of the last importance only to be present at it."
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"You never gain something but that you lose something."
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"I would remind my countrymen that they are to be men first, and Americans only at a late and convenient hour."
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"That aim in life is highest which requires the highest and finest discipline."
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"English sense has toiled, but Hindoo wisdom never perspired."
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"We loiter in winter while it is already spring."
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"America is said to be the arena on which the battle of freedom is to be fought; but surely it cannot be freedom in a merely political sense that is meant. Even if we grant that the American has freed himself from a political tyrant, he is still the slave of an economical and moral tyrant. Now that the republic--the res- publica--has been settled, it is time to look after the res- privata,--the private state,--to see, as the Roman Senate charged its consuls, "ne quid res-PRIVATA detrimenti caperet," that the private state receive no detriment."
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"The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right."
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"If one listens to the faintest but constant suggestions of his genius, which are certainly true, he sees not to what extremes, or even insanity, it may lead him; and yet that way, as he grows more resolute and faithful, his road lies."
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"If a person lost would conclude that after all he is not lost, he is not beside himself, but standing in his own old shoes on thevery spot where he is, and that for the time being he will live there; but the places that have known him, they are lost,--how much anxiety and danger would vanish."
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"If words were invented to conceal thought, newspapers are a great improvement of a bad invention"
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"Let go of the past and go for the future."
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"True kindness is a pure divine affinity, Not founded upon human consanguinity. It is a spirit, not a blood relation, Superior to family and station."
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"A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the state with their conscience also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part, and they are commonly treated as enemies by it."
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"The wisest man preaches no doctrines; he has no scheme; he sees no rafter, not even a cobweb, against the heavens. It is clear sky."
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"You may raise enough money to tunnel a mountain, but you cannot raise money enough to hire a man who is minding his own business."
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"Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have. ... Shall we always study to obtain more, and not sometimes be content with less?"
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"Thus the State never intentionally confronts a man's sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion."
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