Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
If private men are obliged to perform the offices of government, to protect the weak and dispense justice, then the government becomes only a hired man, or clerk, to perform menial or indifferent services.
Henry David Thoreau
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Justice
Services
Menial
Government
Indifferent
Clerk
Men
Perform
Dispense
Private
Clerks
Weak
Abolition
Office
Offices
Protect
Hired
Becomes
Obliged
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
Live free, child of the mist,- and with respect to knowledge we are allchildren of the mist.
Henry David Thoreau
In the long run, we only hit what we aim at.
Henry David Thoreau
The true finish is the work of time, and the use to which a thing is put. The elements are still polishing the pyramids.
Henry David Thoreau
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.
Henry David Thoreau
I have heard a good many pretend that they are going to die or that they have died, for aught that I know. Nonsense! I'll defy them to do it. They have n't got life enough in them.... Only half a dozen or so have died since the world began.
Henry David Thoreau
Our science, so called, is always more barren and mixed with error than our sympathies.
Henry David Thoreau
Can we not do without the society of our gossip a little while, - have our own thoughts to cheer us?
Henry David Thoreau
A man will not need to study history to find out what is best for his own culture.
Henry David Thoreau
It will always be found that one flourishing institution exists and battens on another mouldering one. The Present itself is parasitic to this extent.
Henry David Thoreau
The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.
Henry David Thoreau
That is a pathetic inquiry among travelers and geographers after the site of ancient Troy. It is not near where they think it is.When a thing is decayed and gone, how indistinct must be the place it occupied!
Henry David Thoreau
The poet is no tender slip of fairy stock, who requires peculiar institutions and edicts for his defense, but the toughest son ofearth and of Heaven, and by his greater strength and endurance his fainting companions will recognize the God in him. It is the worshipers of beauty, after all, who have done the real pioneer work of the world.
Henry David Thoreau
The man who thrusts his manners upon me does as if he were to insist on introducing me to his cabinet of curiosities, when I wished to see himself.
Henry David Thoreau
All things in this world must be seen with youthful, hopeful eyes.
Henry David Thoreau
If all were as it seems, and men made the elements their servants for noble ends!
Henry David Thoreau
God is alone,-but the devil, he is far from being alone he sees a great deal of company he is legion.
Henry David Thoreau
It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.
Henry David Thoreau
This whole earth in which we inhabit is but a point is space.
Henry David Thoreau
Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows.
Henry David Thoreau
It is true, we are such poor navigators that our thoughts, for the most part, stand off and on upon a harborless coast, are conversant only with the bights of the bays of poesy, or steer for the public ports of entry, and go into the dry docks of science, where they merely refit for this world, and no natural currents concur to individualize them.
Henry David Thoreau
