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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
Diarist
Ecologist
Environmentalist
Essayist
Naturalist
Philosopher
Poet
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
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Perform
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Clerks
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More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
I wished only to be set down in Canada, and take one honest walk there as I might in Concord woods of an afternoon.
Henry David Thoreau
One attraction in coming to the woods to live was that I should have leisure and opportunity to see the spring come in.
Henry David Thoreau
For things to change, we must change.
Henry David Thoreau
To have made even one person's life a little better, that is to succeed.
Henry David Thoreau
The sport of digging the bait is nearly equal to that of catching the fish, when one's appetite is not too keen.
Henry David Thoreau
I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board.
Henry David Thoreau
Continued traveling is far from productive. It begins with wearing away the soles of the shoes, and making the feet sore, and erelong it will wear a man clean up, after making his heart sore into the bargain. I have observed that the afterlife of those who have traveled much is very pathetic.
Henry David Thoreau
Be as the sailor who keeps the polestar in his eye. By so doing we may not arrive at our port within a calculable period, but we will maintain a true course.
Henry David Thoreau
Farmers are respectable and interesting to me in proportion as they are poor.
Henry David Thoreau
The body can feed the body only.
Henry David Thoreau
The frontiers are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man fronts a fact.
Henry David Thoreau
Why should not a poet's cat be winged as well as his horse?
Henry David Thoreau
To a small man every greater is an exaggeration.
Henry David Thoreau
We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.
Henry David Thoreau
It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear.
Henry David Thoreau
Follow your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour.
Henry David Thoreau
We can never have enough of Nature.
Henry David Thoreau
It is after we get home that we really go over the mountain, if ever.
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
Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence.
Henry David Thoreau
