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Government never furthered any enterprise but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way.
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
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Liberty
Government
Way
Furthered
Never
Alacrity
Libertarianism
Communism
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Enterprise
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
We should treat our minds, that is, ourselves, as innocent and ingenuous children, whose guardians we are, and be careful what objects and what subjects we thrust on their attention.
Henry David Thoreau
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.
Henry David Thoreau
Where there is a lull in truth an institution springs up.
Henry David Thoreau
Translate a book a dozen times from one language to another, and what becomes of its style? Most books would be worn out and disappear in this ordeal. The pen which wrote it is soon destroyed, but the poem survives.
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
There are many skillful apprentices, but few master workmen.
Henry David Thoreau
There are various, nay, incredible faiths why should we be alarmed at any of them? What man believes, God believes.
Henry David Thoreau
Nature is not made after such a fashion as we would have her. We piously exaggerate her wonders, as the scenery around our home.
Henry David Thoreau
The Indian navigator naturally distinguishes by a name those parts of a stream where he has encountered quick water and forks, andagain, the lakes and smooth water where he can rest his weary arms, since those are the most interesting and more arable parts to him.
Henry David Thoreau
When my legs begin to move, the thoughts begin to flow.
Henry David Thoreau
The imagination, give it the least license, dives deeper and soars higher than Nature goes.
Henry David Thoreau
The cost of a thing is something called life which is given in exchange for it.
Henry David Thoreau
Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.
Henry David Thoreau
If we were always, indeed, getting our living, and regulating our lives according to the last and best mode we had learned, we should never be troubled with ennui.
Henry David Thoreau
Many of the phenomena of Winter are suggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We are accustomed to hear this king described as a rude and boisterous tyrant but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of Summer.
Henry David Thoreau
Friends will not only live in harmony, but in melody.
Henry David Thoreau
Instead of water we got here a draught of beer, a lumberer's drink, which would acclimate and naturalize a man at once,-which would make him see green, and, if he slept, dream that he heard the wind sough among the pines.
Henry David Thoreau
Whatever has not come under the sway of man is wild. In this sense original and independent men are wild - not tamed and broken by society.
Henry David Thoreau
Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge college is as solitary as a dervis in the desert.
Henry David Thoreau
Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.
Henry David Thoreau