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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
Author
Autobiographer
Diarist
Ecologist
Environmentalist
Essayist
Naturalist
Philosopher
Poet
Translator
Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Life
Taxes
Meet
Says
Politics
Money
Give
Government
Giving
Haste

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There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.
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There is a certain class of unbelievers who sometimes ask me such questions as, if I think that I can live on vegetable food alone and to strike at the root of the matter at once,--for the root is faith,--I am accustomed to answer such, that I can live on board nails. If they cannot understand that, they cannot understand much that I have to say.
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I do not know but it is too much to read one newspaper a week. I have tried it recently, and for so long it seems to me that I have not dwelt in my native region. The sun, the clouds, the snow, the trees say not so much to me. You cannot serve two masters.
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I hear many condemn these men because they were so few. When were the good and the brave ever in a majority? Would you have had him wait till that time came?--till you and I came over to him?
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To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.
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If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
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What can be expressed in words can be expressed in life.
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An unclean person is universally a slothful one.
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How sweet it would be to treat men and things, for an hour, for just what they are!
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We are a nation of politicians, concerned about the outmost defenses only of freedom. It is our children's children who may perchance be really free.
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Let go of the past and live the future . . . Live the life you imagined.
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If you would be chaste, you must be temperate.
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After all the field of battle possesses many advantages over the drawing-room. There at least is no room for pretension or excessive ceremony, no shaking of hands or rubbing of noses, which make one doubt your sincerity, but hearty as well as hard hand-play. It at least exhibits one of the faces of humanity, the former only a mask.
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There has always been the same amount of light in the world. The new and missing stars, the comets and eclipses, do not affect thegeneral illumination, for only our glasses appreciate them.
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The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. I have no wealth to bestow on him. If he knows that I am happy in loving him, he will want no other reward. Is not friendship divine in this?
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It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.
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The doctors are all agreed that I am suffering for want of society. Was never a case like it. First, I did not know that I was suffering at all. Secondly, as an Irishman might say, I had thought it was indigestion of the society I got.
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Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.
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All health and success does me good, however far off and withdrawn it may appear all disease and failure helps to make me sad anddoes me evil, however much sympathy it may have with me or I with it.
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When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods: what would become of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall?
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