Quotation by Henry David Thoreau

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These volumes contain not the highest, but a very practicable wisdom, which startles and provokes, rather than informs us. Carlyle does not oblige us to think; we have thought enough for him already, but he compels us to act.

Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), U.S. philosopher, author, naturalist. "Thomas Carlyle and His Works" (1847), in The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, vol. 4, p. 346, Houghton Mifflin (1906).

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