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I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government

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
Better
Justice
Asks
Freedom
Government

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Nature is fair in proportion as the youth is pure. The heavens and the earth are one flower the earth is the calyx, the heavens the corolla.
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If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intent of doing you good, you should run for your life.
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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.
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Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?
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I am reminded by my journey how exceedingly new this country still is. You have only to travel for a few days into the interior and back parts even of many of the old States, to come to that very America which the Northmen, and Cabot, and Gosnold, and Smith, and Raleigh visited.
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Knowledge does not come to us in details, but in flashes of light from heaven.
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Always the laws of light are the same, but the modes and degrees of seeing vary.
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The fact which interests us most is the life of the naturalist. The purest science is still biographical. Nothing will dignify and elevate science while it is sundered so wholly from the moral life of its devotee.
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Homeliness is almost as great a merit in a book as in a house, if the reader would abide there. It is next to beauty, and a very high art.
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Most people dread finding out when they come to die that they have never really lived.
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If some are prosecuted for abusing children, others deserve to be prosecuted for maltreating the face of nature committed to their care.
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If the day and night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal - that is your success.
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The community has no bribe that will tempt a wise man.
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If men were to be destroyed and the books they have written were to be transmitted to a new race of creatures, in a new world, what kind of record would be found in them of so remarkable a phenomenon as the rainbow?
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Methinks my own soul must be a bright invisible green.
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Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps.
Henry David Thoreau
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It is not worth the while to let our imperfections disturb us always.
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To speak or do anything that shall concern mankind, one must speak and act as if well, or from that grain of health which he has left.
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The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.
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What the first philosopher taught the last will have to repeat.
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