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When I meet a government which says to me, Your money or your life, why should I be in haste to give it my money?
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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Ecologist
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
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Henry D. Thoreau
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More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
If to chaffer and higgle are bad in trade, they are much worse in Love. It demands directness as of an arrow.
Henry David Thoreau
In 1848, Thoreau went to jail for refusing, as a protest against the Mexican war, to pay his poll tax. When RW Emerson came to bail him out, Emerson said, 'Henry, what are you doing in there?' Thoreau quietly replied, 'Ralph, what are you doing out there?'
Henry David Thoreau
Who looks in the sun will see no light else but also he will see no shadow. Our life revolves unceasingly, but the centre is ever the same, and the wise will regard only the seasons of the soul.
Henry David Thoreau
We cannot write well or truly but what we write with gusto.
Henry David Thoreau
Amid a world of noisy, shallow actors it is noble to stand aside and say, 'I will simply be.
Henry David Thoreau
As we looked up in silence to those distant lights, we were reminded that it was a rare imagination which first taught that the stars are worlds, and had conferred a great benefit on mankind.
Henry David Thoreau
The most interesting thing which I heard of, in this township of Hull, was an unfailing spring, whose locality was pointed out tome on the side of a distant hill, as I was panting along the shore, though I did not visit it. Perhaps, if I should go through Rome, it would be some spring on the Capitoline Hill I should remember the longest.
Henry David Thoreau
I am no more lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden Pond itself. What company has that lonely lake,I pray?
Henry David Thoreau
The poet's body even is not fed like other men's, but he sometimes tastes the genuine nectar and ambrosia of the gods, and lives adivine life. By the healthful and invigorating thrills of inspiration his life is preserved to a serene old age.
Henry David Thoreau
I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals.
Henry David Thoreau
Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me.
Henry David Thoreau
Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?
Henry David Thoreau
Many, no doubt, are well disposed, but sluggish by constitution and habit, and they cannot conceive of a man who is actuated by higher motives than they are. Accordingly they pronounce this man insane, for they know that they could never act as he does, as long as they are themselves.
Henry David Thoreau
It is tranquil people who accomplish much.
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
I am struck by the fact that the more slowly trees grow at first, the sounder they are at the core, and I think that the same is true of human beings.
Henry David Thoreau
No man who acts from a sense of duty ever puts the lesser duty above the greater. No man has the desire and the ability to work onhigh things, but he has also the ability to build himself a high staging.
Henry David Thoreau
Nature has from the first expanded the minute blossoms of the forest only toward the heavens, above men's heads and unobserved bythem. We see only the flowers that are under our feet in the meadows.
Henry David Thoreau
When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality.
Henry David Thoreau
As in many countries precious metals belong to the crown, so here more precious natural objects of rare beauty should belong to the public.
Henry David Thoreau
