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If we were left solely to the wordy wit of legislators in Congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonal experience and the effectual complaints of the people, America would not long retain her rank among the nations.
Henry David Thoreau
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Henry David Thoreau
Age: 44 †
Born: 1817
Born: July 12
Died: 1862
Died: May 6
Abolitionist
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Autobiographer
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Ecologist
Environmentalist
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
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More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
What means the fact--which is so common, so universal--that some soul that has lost all hope for itself can inspire in another listening soul an infinite confidence in it, even while it is expressing its despair?
Henry David Thoreau
The only fruit which even much living yields seems to be often only some trivial success,--the ability to do some slight thing better. We make conquest only of husks and shells for the most part,--at least apparently,--but sometimes these are cinnamon and spices, you know.
Henry David Thoreau
If you give money, spend yourself with it.
Henry David Thoreau
I find it, as ever, very unprofitable to have much to do with men. It is sowing the wind, but not reaping even the whirlwind onlyreaping an unprofitable calm and stagnation. Our conversation is a smooth, and civil, and never-ending speculation merely.
Henry David Thoreau
To the man who cherishes a secret in his breast, there is a still greater secret unexplored. Our most indifferent acts may be a matter for secrecy, but whatever we do with the utmost truthfulness and integrity, by virtue of its pureness, must be transparent as light.
Henry David Thoreau
Men go to a fire for entertainment. When I see how eagerly men will run to a fire, whether in warm or in cold weather, by day or by night, dragging an engine at their heels, I'm astonished to perceive how good a purpose the level of excitement is made to serve.
Henry David Thoreau
We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.
Henry David Thoreau
We should endeavor practically in our lives to correct all the defects which our imagination detects.
Henry David Thoreau
Under the one word house are included the schoolhouse, the almshouse, the jail, the tavern, the dwellinghouse and the meanest shed or cave in which men live contains elements of all these. But nowhere on the earth stands the entire and perfect house.
Henry David Thoreau
As they say in geology, time never fails, there is always enough of it, so I may say, criticism never fails.
Henry David Thoreau
The hawk is aerial brother of the wave which he sails over and surveys, those his perfect air-inflated wings answering to the elemental unfledged pinions of the sea.
Henry David Thoreau
The more you have thought and written on a given theme, the more you can still write. Thought breeds thought. It grows under your hands.
Henry David Thoreau
If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose.
Henry David Thoreau
Let your walks now be a little more adventurous.
Henry David Thoreau
The question is not what you look at – but how you look & whether you see.
Henry David Thoreau
As long as there is satire, the poet is, as it were, particeps criminis.
Henry David Thoreau
Generally speaking, the political news, whether domestic or foreign, might be written today for the next ten years with sufficientaccuracy. Most revolutions in society have not power to interest, still less alarm us but tell me that our rivers are drying up, or the genus pine dying out in the country, and I might attend.
Henry David Thoreau
That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.
Henry David Thoreau
What lies before us and what lies behind us are small matters compared to what lies within us. And when we bring what is within out into the world, miracles happen.
Henry David Thoreau
A kitten is so flexible that she is almost double the hind parts are equivalent to another kitten with which the fore part plays. She does not discover that her tail belongs to her till you tread upon it.
Henry David Thoreau
