"In their daily life, all are braver than they know."
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Henry David Thoreau quotes (page 76 of 139)
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"My life is like a stroll upon the beach."
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"That we have but little faith is not sad, but that we have little faithfulness. By faithfulness faith is earned."
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"The scenery when it is truly seen reacts on the life of the seer."
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"Music is the crystallization of sound."
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"At the extreme north, the voyagers are obliged to dance and act plays for employment."
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"The science of Humboldt is one thing, poetry is another thing. The poet to-day, notwithstanding all the discoveries of science, and the accumulated learning of mankind, enjoys no advantage over Homer."
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"It is remarkable, but on the whole, perhaps, not to be lamented, that the world is so unkind to a new book. Any distinguished traveler who comes to our shores is likely to get more dinners and speeches of welcome than he can well dispose of, but the best books, if noticed at all, meet with coldness and suspicion, or, what is worse, gratuitous, off-hand criticism."
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"See how he cowers and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears, not being immortal nor divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate."
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"In some countries a hunting parson is no uncommon sight. Such a one might make a good shepherd's dog, but is far from being the Good Shepherd."
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"The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive."
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"The civilized man is a more experienced and wiser savage."
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"If you will not try, you will go to your grave with your song still inside you."
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"I am grateful for what I have. My thanksgiving is perpetual."
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"I have seen some who did not know when to turn aside their eyes in meeting yours. A truly confident and magnanimous spirit is wiser than to contend for the mastery in such encounters. Serpents alone conquer by the steadiness of their gaze. My friend looks me in the face and sees me, that is all."
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"We communicate like the burrows of foxes, in silence and darkness, under ground. We are undermined by faith and love."
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"The inhabitants of the Cape generally do not complain of their "soil," but will tell you that it is good enough for them to dry their fish on."
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"As a man thinks of himself, so he is."
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"A man’s ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beautiful - while his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless, besides being ugly. Which is the best man to deal with - he who knows nothing about a subject, and, what is extremely rare, knows that he knows nothing, or he who really knows something about it, but thinks that he knows all?"
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"Exaggeration! was ever any virtue attributed to a man without exaggeration? was ever any vice, without infinite exaggeration? Do we not exaggerate ourselves to ourselves, or do we recognize ourselves for the actual men we are? Are we not all great men? Yet what are we actually, to speak of? We live by exaggeration."
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