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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
Best
Kind
Men
Governs
Anarchism
Anarchist
Disobedience
Prepared
Government

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A man's interest in a single bluebird is worth more than a complete but dry list of the fauna and flora of a town.
Henry David Thoreau
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I have heard a good many pretend that they are going to die or that they have died, for aught that I know. Nonsense! I'll defy them to do it. They have n't got life enough in them.... Only half a dozen or so have died since the world began.
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A stranger may easily detect what is strange to the oldest inhabitant, for the strange is his province.
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At the extreme north, the voyagers are obliged to dance and act plays for employment.
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I will come to you, my friend, when I no longer need you. Then you will find a palace, not an almshouse.
Henry David Thoreau
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It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are... than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.
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City life is millions of people being lonesome together.
Henry David Thoreau
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What is sour in the house a bracing walk in the woods makes sweet.
Henry David Thoreau
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Birds never sing in caves.
Henry David Thoreau
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We need only travel enough to give our intellects an airing.
Henry David Thoreau
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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
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Even Nature is observed to have her playful moods or aspects, of which man sometimes seems to be the sport.
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Are you in want of amusement nowadays? Then play a little at the game of getting a living. There was never anything equal to it. Do it temperately, though, and don't sweat.
Henry David Thoreau
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Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify.
Henry David Thoreau
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Removing the weeds, putting fresh soil about the bean stems, and encouraging this weed which I had sown, making the yellow soil express its summer thought in bean leaves and blossoms rather than in wormwood and piper and millet grass, making the earth say beans instead of grass, - this was my daily work.
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The richest gifts we can bestow are the least marketable. We hate the kindness which we understand.
Henry David Thoreau
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A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It is continually receiving new life and motion from above. It is intermediate in its nature between land and sky.
Henry David Thoreau
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The way by which you may get money almost without exception leads downward.
Henry David Thoreau
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It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar. Yet do this even till you can do better, and you may perhaps find some Symmes' Hole by which to get at the inside at last.
Henry David Thoreau
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God is alone,-but the devil, he is far from being alone he sees a great deal of company he is legion.
Henry David Thoreau