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There is no such thing as accomplishing a righteous reform by the use of expediency. There is no such thing as sliding up- hill.In morals the only sliders are backsliders.

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
Essayist
Naturalist
Philosopher
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Reform
Morality
Sliding
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Accomplishing
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Expediency
Thing
Morals
Hill
Righteous
Hills

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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At present the globe goes with a shattered constitution in its orbit.... No doubt the simple powers of nature, properly directed by man, would make it healthy and a paradise as the laws of man's own constitution but wait to be obeyed, to restore him to health and happiness.
Henry David Thoreau
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I hate the present modes of living and getting a living. Farming and shopkeeping and working at a trade or profession are all odious to me. I should relish getting my living in a simple, primitive fashion.
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The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindu, Persian, and Greek, were a class than which none has been poorer in outward riches, none so rich inward.
Henry David Thoreau
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To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning.
Henry David Thoreau
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Spring. March fans it, April christens it, and May puts on its jacket and trousers.
Henry David Thoreau
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As yesterday and the historical ages are past, as the work of today is present, so some flitting perspectives and demi-experiencesof the life that is in nature are in time veritably future, or rather outside of time, perennial, young, divine, in the wind and rain which never die.
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I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.
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There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature and has his senses still.
Henry David Thoreau
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What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.
Henry David Thoreau
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When any real progress is made, we unlearned and learn anew what we thought we knew before.
Henry David Thoreau
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I am a citizen of the world first, and of this country at a later and more convenient hour.
Henry David Thoreau
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Those things for which the most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is an important item in the term bill, while for the far more valuable education which he gets by associating with the most cultivated of his contemporaries no charge is made.
Henry David Thoreau
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To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.
Henry David Thoreau
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From exertion come wisdom and purity from sloth ignorance and sensuality.
Henry David Thoreau
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I am engaged to Concord and my own private pursuits by 10,000 ties, and it would be suicide to rend them.
Henry David Thoreau
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The better part of the man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool's life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before.
Henry David Thoreau
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The greatest tragedy in life is to spend your whole life fishing only to discover it was never fish that you were after.
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If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose.
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There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dullness. When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics and shopkeepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all the afternoon too, sitting with crossed legs, so many of them - as if the legs were made to sit upon, and not to stand or walk upon.
Henry David Thoreau
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The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.
Henry David Thoreau