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It is not for a man to put himself in such an attitude to society, but to maintain himself in whatever attitude he find himself through obedience to the laws of his being, which will never be one of opposition to a just government, if he should chance to meet with such.

Henry David Thoreau

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Henry David Thoreau
Age: 44 †
Born: 1817
Born: July 12
Died: 1862
Died: May 6
Abolitionist
Author
Autobiographer
Diarist
Ecologist
Environmentalist
Essayist
Naturalist
Philosopher
Poet
Translator
Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Society
Opposition
Government
Obedience
Find
Laws
Never
Meet
Men
Attitude
Law
Chance
Whatever
Maintain

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning.
Henry David Thoreau
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The kind uncles and aunts of the race are more esteemed than its true spiritual fathers and mothers.
Henry David Thoreau
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So is the English Parliament provincial. Mere country bumpkins, they betray themselves, when any more important question arises for them to settle, the Irish question, for instance,--the English question why did I not say? Their natures are subdued to what they work in. Their good breeding respects only secondary objects.
Henry David Thoreau
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We do not associate the idea of antiquity with the ocean, nor wonder how it looked a thousand years ago, as we do of the land, for it was equally wild and unfathomable always.
Henry David Thoreau
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Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature -if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you -know that the morning and spring of your life are past. Thus may you feel your pulse.
Henry David Thoreau
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Endeavor to live the life you have imagined.
Henry David Thoreau
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We do not live by justice, but by grace.
Henry David Thoreau
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The question is whether you can bear freedom. At present the vast majority of men, whether white or black, require the discipline of labor which enslaves them for their own good.
Henry David Thoreau
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Drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your work with satisfaction - a work at which you would not be ashamed to invoke the muse.
Henry David Thoreau
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A town is saved, not more by the righteous men in it, than by the woods and swamps that surround it.
Henry David Thoreau
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If ever I did a man any goodof course it was something exceptional and insignificant compared with the good or evil which I am constantly doing by being what I am.
Henry David Thoreau
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May we so love as never to have occasion to repent of our love!
Henry David Thoreau
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Who hears the fishes when they cry?
Henry David Thoreau
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Even trees do not die without a groan.
Henry David Thoreau
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Always the laws of light are the same, but the modes and degrees of seeing vary.
Henry David Thoreau
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I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we mingle with the herd of common men.
Henry David Thoreau
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A man might well pray that he may not taboo or curse any portion of nature by being buried in it.
Henry David Thoreau
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All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be.
Henry David Thoreau
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That is mere sentimentality that lies abed by day and thinks itself white, far from the tan and callus of experience.
Henry David Thoreau
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Bread may not always nourish us but it always does us good, it even takes stiffness out of our joints, and makes us supple and buoyant, when we knew not what ailed us, to recognize any generosity in man or Nature, to share any unmixed and heroic joy.
Henry David Thoreau