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Unless the human race perspire more than I do, there is no occasion to live by the sweat of their brow. If men cannot get on without money (the smallest amount will suffice), the truest method of earning it is by working as a laborer at one dollar per day. You are least dependent so I speak as an expert, having used several kinds of labor.

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
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
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Henry D. Thoreau
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Cannot
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Truest
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Dependent
Expert
Live
Least
Several
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Human
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Laborer
Humans
Working
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Dollar
Suffice
Without
Speak
Method
Smallest
Laborers
Kind
Dollars
Sweat
Brow
Men
Money

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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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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I have seen some whose consciences, owing undoubtedly to former indulgence, had grown to be as irritable as spoilt children, and at length gave them no peace. They did not know when to swallow their cud, and their lives of course yielded no milk.
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Biography, too, is liable to the same objection it should be autobiography. Let us not, as the Germans advise, endeavor to go abroad and vex our bowels that we may be somebody else to explain him. If I am not I, who will be?
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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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A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.
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There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man.
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Any man knows when he is justified, and all the wits in the world cannot enlighten him on that point. The murderer always knows that he is justly punished but when a government takes the life of a man without the consent of his conscience, it is an audacious government, and is taking a step towards its own dissolution.
Henry David Thoreau
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Life is grand, and so are its environments of Past and Future. Would the face of nature be so serene and beautiful if man's destiny were not equally so?
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An efficient and valuable man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not. The inefficient offer their inefficiency to the highest bidder, and are forever expecting to be put into office. One would suppose that they were rarely disappointed.
Henry David Thoreau
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Life isn't about finding yourself it's about creating yourself. So live the life you imagined.
Henry David Thoreau
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I walk out into a nature such as the old prophets and poets Menu, Moses, Homer, Chaucer, walked in. You may name it America, but it is not America. Neither Americus Vespucius, nor Columbus, nor the rest were the discoverers of it. There is a truer account of it in Mythology than in any history of America so called that I have seen.
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We rarely meet a man who can tell us any news which he has not read in a newspaper, or been told by his neighbor and, for the most part, the only difference between us and our fellow is that he has seen the newspaper, or been out to tea, and we have not.
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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?
Henry David Thoreau
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The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.
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To be awake is to be alive.
Henry David Thoreau
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The cost of a thing is something called life which is given in exchange for it.
Henry David Thoreau
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Give me the old familiar world, post-office and all, with this ever new self, with this infinite expectation and faith, which does not know when it is beaten.
Henry David Thoreau
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I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
Henry David Thoreau
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At a certain season of our life we are accustomed to consider every spot as the possible site of a house.
Henry David Thoreau
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The tavern will compare favorably with the church.
Henry David Thoreau