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Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?

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
Laws
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Exist
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Disobedience
Obey
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Here or nowhere is our heaven.
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Mathematics should be mixed not only with physics but with ethics.
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Your richest veins don't lie nearest the surface.
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Compliments and flattery oftenest excite my contempt by the pretension they imply for who is he that assumes to flatter me? To compliment often implies an assumption of superiority in the complimenter. It is, in fact, a subtle detraction.
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It is not when I am going to meet him, but when I am just turning away and leaving him alone, that I discover what God is. I say, God. I am not sure that that is the name. You will know what I mean.
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I lose my respect for the man who can make the mystery of sex the subject of a coarse jest, yet when you speak earnestly and seriously on the subject, is silent.
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Be resolutely and faithfully what you are be humbly what you aspire to be.
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God reigns when we take a liberal view, when a liberal view is presented to us.
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Water is a pioneer which the settler follows, taking advantage of its improvements.
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I say, break the law.
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Generally speaking, the political news, whether domestic or foreign, might be written today for the next ten years with sufficientaccuracy. Most revolutions in society have not power to interest, still less alarm us but tell me that our rivers are drying up, or the genus pine dying out in the country, and I might attend.
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Only nature has a right to grieve perpetually, for she only is innocent. Soon the ice will melt, and the blackbirds sing along the river which he frequented, as pleasantly as ever. The same everlasting serenity will appear in this face of God, and we will not be sorrowful, if he is not.
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What wealth is it to have such friends that we cannot think of them without elevation!
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By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent.
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Every man has to learn the points of the compass again as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction.
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We have not so good a right to hate any as our Friend.
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Any moral philosophy is exceedingly rare. This of Menu addresses our privacy more than most. It is a more private and familiar, and at the same time, a more public and universal word, than is spoken in parlor or pulpit nowadays.
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Surely one may as profitably be soaked in the juices of a swamp for one day as pick his way dry-shod over sand. Cold and damp ? are they not as rich experience as warmth and dryness?
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How meanly and grossly do we deal with nature!
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I sometimes despair of getting anything quite simple and honest done in this world by the help of men. They would have to be passed through a powerful press first, to squeeze their old notions out of them, so that they would not soon get upon their legs again.
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