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That government is best which governs not at all and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.

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
Disobedience
Prepared
Government
Best
Kind
Men
Governs
Anarchism
Anarchist

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I was awakened at midnight by some heavy, low-flying bird, probably a loon, flapping by close over my head, along the shore. So, turning the other side of my half-clad body to the fire, I sought slumber again.
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Write while the heat is in you.
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Our sadness is not sad, but our cheap joys.
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We cannot well do without our sins they are the highway of our virtue.
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Men spend the best parts of their lives earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it.
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We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake.
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Truth never turns to rebuke falsehood her own straightforwardness is the severest correction.
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A farmer, a hunter, a soldier, a reporter, even a philosopher, may be daunted but nothing can deter a poet, for he is actuated by pure love. Who can predict his comings and goings? His business calls him out at all hours, even when doctors sleep.
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Government never furthered any enterprise but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way.
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I have much to learn of the Indian, nothing of the missionary.
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Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buries itself alive.
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However mean your life is, meet it and live it do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house.
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The scholar may be sure that he writes the tougher truth for the calluses on his palms. They give firmness to the sentence. Indeed, the mind never makes a great and successful effort, without a corresponding energy of the body.
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When will the world learn that a million men are of no importance compared with one man?
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As yesterday and the historical ages are past, as the work of today is present, so some flitting perspectives and demi-experiencesof the life that is in nature are in time veritably future, or rather outside of time, perennial, young, divine, in the wind and rain which never die.
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All these sounds, the crowing of cocks, the baying of dogs, and the hum of insects at noon, are the evidence of nature's health orsound state.
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It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.
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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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The sport of digging the bait is nearly equal to that of catching the fish, when one's appetite is not too keen.
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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.
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