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Some, it seems to me, elect their rulers for their crookedness. But I think that a straight stick makes the best cane, and an upright man the best ruler.
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
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Ecologist
Environmentalist
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Naturalist
Philosopher
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
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Integrity
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Upright
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
Morning work! By the blushes of Aurora and the music of Memnon, what should be man's morning work in this world?
Henry David Thoreau
If we cannot sing of faith and triumph, we will sing our despair. We will be that kind of bird. There are day owls, and there arenight owls, and each is beautiful and even musical while about its business.
Henry David Thoreau
What do the botanists know? Our lives should go between the lichen and the bark. The eye may see for the hand, but not for the mind. We are still being born, and have as yet but a dim vision of sea and land, sun, moon, and stars, and shall not see clearly till after nine days at least.
Henry David Thoreau
All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.
Henry David Thoreau
They were pleasant spring days, in which the winter of man's discontent was thawing as well as the earth, and the life that had lain torpid began to stretch itself.
Henry David Thoreau
Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage.
Henry David Thoreau
You boast of spending a tenth part of your income in charity may be you should spend the nine tenths so, and done with it.
Henry David Thoreau
We waded so gently and reverently, or we pulled together so smoothly, that the fishes of thought were not scared from the stream, nor feared any angler on the bank, but came and went grandly, like the clouds which came and went on the western sky, and the mother-o'-pearl flocks which sometimes form and dissolve there.
Henry David Thoreau
. . . we should be men first, and subjects afterward.
Henry David Thoreau
It is but too easy to establish another durable and harmonious routine. Immediately all parts of nature consent to it. Only make something to take the place of something, and men will behave as if it was the very thing they wanted.
Henry David Thoreau
It is not all books that are as dull as their readers.
Henry David Thoreau
To say that God has given a man many and great talents frequently means that he has brought his heavens down within reach of his hands.
Henry David Thoreau
No doubt another may also think for me but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself.
Henry David Thoreau
God reigns when we take a liberal view, when a liberal view is presented to us.
Henry David Thoreau
I hardly know an intellectual man, even, who is so broad and truly liberal that you can think aloud in his society.
Henry David Thoreau
The poet is he who can write some pure mythology today without the aid of posterity.
Henry David Thoreau
How little do the most wonderful inventions of modern times detain us. They insult nature. Every machine, or particular application, seems a slight outrage against universal laws.
Henry David Thoreau
I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite - only a sense of existence. Well, anything for variety.
Henry David Thoreau
Most men would feel shame if caught preparing with their own hands precisely such a dinner, whether of animal or vegetable food, as is every day prepared for them by others. Yet till this is otherwise we are not civilized, and, if gentlemen and ladies, are not true men and women. This certainly suggests what change is to be made.
Henry David Thoreau
Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house.
Henry David Thoreau
