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“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. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings.”
― Walden or, Life in the Woods
― Walden or, Life in the Woods
“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.”
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“I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.”
― On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
― On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
“The preachers and lecturers deal with men of straw, as they are men of straw themselves. Why, a free-spoken man, of sound lungs, cannot draw a long breath without causing your rotten institutions to come toppling down by the vacuum he makes. Your church is a baby-house made of blocks, and so of the state.
...The church, the state, the school, the magazine, think they are liberal and free! It is the freedom of a prison-yard.”
― I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau
...The church, the state, the school, the magazine, think they are liberal and free! It is the freedom of a prison-yard.”
― I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.”
― Walden or, Life in the Woods
― Walden or, Life in the Woods
Joseph’s 2025 Year in Books
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