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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
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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
Weak
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Menial
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More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
There is not so good an understanding between any two, but the exposure by the one of a serious fault in the other will produce a misunderstanding in proportion to its heinousness.
Henry David Thoreau
The music of all creatures has to do with their loves, even of toads and frogs. Is it not the same with man?
Henry David Thoreau
Since most of us spend our lives doing ordinary tasks, the most important thing is to carry them out extraordinarily well.
Henry David Thoreau
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?
Henry David Thoreau
Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance they make the latitudes and longitudes.
Henry David Thoreau
We must have infinite faith in each other. If we have not, we must never let it leak out that we have not.
Henry David Thoreau
How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had a seedtime of character?
Henry David Thoreau
Being a teacher is like being in jail once it's on your record, you can never get rid of it.
Henry David Thoreau
Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.
Henry David Thoreau
It seems to me that the god that is commonly worshipped in civilized countries is not at all divine, though he bears a divine name, but is the overwhelming authority and respectability of mankind combined. Men reverence one another, not yet God.
Henry David Thoreau
In the long run, you hit only what you aim at.
Henry David Thoreau
We must love our friend so much that she shall be associated with our purest and holiest thoughts alone.
Henry David Thoreau
The eye is the jewel of the body.
Henry David Thoreau
Wherever there is a channel for water, there is a road for the canoe.
Henry David Thoreau
Simplicity is the law of Nature for man as well as for flowers. When the tapestry (corolla) of the nuptial bed (calyx) is excessive, luxuriant, it is unproductive. The fertile flowers are single, not double.
Henry David Thoreau
Even Nature is observed to have her playful moods or aspects, of which man sometimes seems to be the sport.
Henry David Thoreau
Impulse is, after all, the best linguist its logic, if not conformable to Aristotle, cannot fail to be most convincing.
Henry David Thoreau
I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.
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
The little things in life are as interesting as the big ones.
Henry David Thoreau
