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Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
Wildness is the preservation of the World.
I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees.
An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.
Music is continuous; only listening is intermittent.
Me thinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.
I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit.
That government is best which governs not at all.
It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.
Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.
We can choose to be affected by the world or we can choose to affect the world.
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
Love must be as much a light, as it is a flame.
We belong to the community. It is not the tailor alone who is the ninth part of a man; it is as much the preacher, and the merchant, and the farmer. Where is this division of labor to end? and what object does it finally serve? No doubt another may also think for me; but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself.
I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere. Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength.
It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
The world rests on principles.
My actual life is a fact, in view of which I have no occasion to congratulate myself; but for my faith and aspiration I have respect. It is from these that I speak.
It is worth the while to live respectably unto ourselves. We can possibly get along with a neighbor, even with a bedfellow, whom we respect but very little; but as soon as it comes to this, that we do not respect ourselves, then we do not get along at all...
It is never too late to give up our prejudices.