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Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage.
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
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Ecologist
Environmentalist
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Naturalist
Philosopher
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
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More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
I repeat that in this sense the most splendid court in Christendom is provincial, having authority to consult about Transalpine interests only, and not the affairs of Rome. A prætor or proconsul would suffice to settle the questions which absorb the attention of the English Parliament and the American Congress.
Henry David Thoreau
A sentence should be read as if its author, had he held a plough instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end.
Henry David Thoreau
I cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts in they are commonly ruled for dollars and cents.
Henry David Thoreau
Morning glory is the best name, it always refreshes me to see it.
Henry David Thoreau
I wish to learn what life has to teach, and not, when I come to die, discover that I have not truly lived.
Henry David Thoreau
What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.
Henry David Thoreau
The most attractive sentences are, perhaps, not the wisest, but the surest and roundest. They are spoken firmly and conclusively,as if the speaker had a right to know what he says, and if not wise, they have at least been well learned.
Henry David Thoreau
True, there are architects so called in this country, and I have heard of one at least possessed with the idea of making architectural ornaments have a core of truth, a necessity, and hence a beauty, as if it were a revelation to him. All very well perhaps from his point of view, but only a little better than the common dilettantism.
Henry David Thoreau
We have not so good a right to hate any as our Friend.
Henry David Thoreau
Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.
Henry David Thoreau
No definition of poetry is adequate unless it be poetry itself. The most accurate analysis by the rarest wisdom is yet insufficient, and the poet will instantly prove it false by setting aside its requisitions. It is indeed all that we do not know.
Henry David Thoreau
I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one.
Henry David Thoreau
If there is any hell more unprincipled than our rulers, and we, the ruled, I feel curious to see it.
Henry David Thoreau
Do what you love. Know your own bone gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.
Henry David Thoreau
Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. Why, nature is but another name for health.
Henry David Thoreau
The prosaic man sees things badly, or with the bodily sense but the poet sees them clad in beauty, with the spiritual sense.
Henry David Thoreau
Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God's property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.
Henry David Thoreau
Color, which is the poet's wealth, is so expensive that most take to mere outline sketches and become men of science.
Henry David Thoreau
Especially the transcendental philosophy needs the leaven of humor to render it light and digestible.
Henry David Thoreau
Simplify your life. Don't waste the years struggling for things that are unimportant. Don't burden yourself with possessions. Keep your needs and wants simple and enjoy what you have. Don't destroy your peace of mind by looking back, worrying about the past. Live in the present. Simplify!
Henry David Thoreau
