Saturday, July 12, 2008

Today is Thoreau's Birthday

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.

Be not simply good; be good for something.

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage.

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestioned ability of a man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.

In wildness is the preservation of the world.
Henry David Thoreau

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