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Thoreau, Henry David, 1817-1862

"Walden"

It is good
bait sometimes, I allow. With his horizon all his own, yet he a
poor man, born to be poor, with his inherited Irish poverty or poor
life, his Adam's grandmother and boggy ways, not to rise in this
world, he nor his posterity, till their wading webbed bog-trotting
feet get talaria to their heels.
Higher Laws
As I came home through the woods with my string of fish,
trailing my pole, it being now quite dark, I caught a glimpse of a
woodchuck stealing across my path, and felt a strange thrill of
savage delight, and was strongly tempted to seize and devour him
raw; not that I was hungry then, except for that wildness which he
represented. Once or twice, however, while I lived at the pond, I
found myself ranging the woods, like a half-starved hound, with a
strange abandonment, seeking some kind of venison which I might
devour, and no morsel could have been too savage for me. The
wildest scenes had become unaccountably familiar. I found in
myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is
named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a
primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both.


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