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That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.
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
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Least
Politics
Freedom
Governs
Government
Governing
Best
Patriotic
People
Presidential
Discipline
Liberty
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
This life we live is a strange dream, and I don't believe at all any account men give of it.
Henry David Thoreau
We make needless ado about capital punishment,--taking lives, when there is no life to take.
Henry David Thoreau
We are sometimes made aware of a kindness long passed, and realize that there have been times when our friends' thoughts of us were of so pure and lofty a character that they passed over us like the winds of heaven unnoticed when they treated us not as what we were, but as what we aspired to be.
Henry David Thoreau
We can never have enough of Nature.
Henry David Thoreau
Every man will be a poet if he can otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the poet.
Henry David Thoreau
So easy is it, though many housekeepers doubt it, to establish new and better customs in the place of the old.
Henry David Thoreau
No people ever lived by cursing their fathers, however great a curse their fathers might have been to them.
Henry David Thoreau
Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buries itself alive.
Henry David Thoreau
I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute Freedom and Wildness, as contrasted with a Freedom and Culture merely civil, - to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society.
Henry David Thoreau
I am wont to think that men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men. The former are so much the freer.
Henry David Thoreau
The words of some men are thrown forcibly against you and adhere like burrs.
Henry David Thoreau
I can alter my life by altering my attitude. He who would have nothing to do with thorns must never attempt to gather flowers.
Henry David Thoreau
The meeting of two eternities, the past and future....is precisely the present moment.
Henry David Thoreau
Let go of the past and live the future . . . Live the life you imagined.
Henry David Thoreau
It is what a man thinks of himself that really determines his fate.
Henry David Thoreau
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
This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments?
Henry David Thoreau
I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals.
Henry David Thoreau
They who are continually shocked by slavery have some right to be shocked by the violent death of the slaveholder, but no others.Such will be more shocked by his life than by his death.
Henry David Thoreau
The chickadee and nuthatch are more inspiring society than statesmen and philosophers, and we shall return to these last as to more vulgar companions.
Henry David Thoreau
