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. . . we should be men first, and subjects afterward.

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
Afterward
Disobedience
Subjects
Respect
Firsts
First
Men

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The effect of a good government is to make life more valuable of a bad one, to make it less valuable.
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The poet is he who can write some pure mythology today without the aid of posterity.
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The press is, almost without exception, corrupt.
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There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.
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It is possible to invent a house still more convenient and luxurious than we have...but shall we always study to obtain more of these things, and not sometimes to be content with less?
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Our hymn-books resound with a melodious cursing of God and enduring Him forever.
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Some do not walk at all others walk in the highways a few walk across lots.
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There is no remedy for love but to love more.
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Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is a nest egg, by the side of which more will be laid.
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Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.
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Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buries itself alive.
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Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.
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I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.
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The philosopher's conception of things will, above all, be truer than other men's, and his philosophy will subordinate all the circumstances of life. To live like a philosopher is to live, not foolishly, like other men, but wisely and according to universal laws.
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The student may read Homer or Æschylus in the Greek without danger of dissipation or luxuriousness, for it implies that hein some measure emulate their heroes, and consecrate morning hours to their pages.
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I have no designs on society, or nature, or God. I am simply what I am, or I begin to be that. I live in the present. I only remember the past, and anticipate the future. I love to live.
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Talk about slavery! It is not the peculiar institution of the South. It exists wherever men are bought and sold, wherever a man allows himself to be made a mere thing or a tool, and surrenders his inalienable rights of reason and conscience. Indeed, this slavery is more complete than that which enslaves the body alone.
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In my short experience of human life, the outward obstacles, if there were any such, have not been living men, but the institutions of the dead.
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All sensuality is one, though it takes many forms all purity is one. It is the same whether a man eat, or drink, or cohabit, or sleep sensually. They are but one appetite, and we only need to see a person do any one of these things to know how great a sensualist he is. The impure can neither stand nor sit with purity.
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Most men cry better than they speak. You get more nurture out of them by pinching than addressing them.
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