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Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towardsrecognizing and organizing the rights of man?
Henry David Thoreau
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Henry David Thoreau
Age: 44 †
Born: 1817
Born: July 12
Died: 1862
Died: May 6
Abolitionist
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
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Henry D. Thoreau
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More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
A man receives only what he is ready to receive, whether physically or intellectually or morally, as animals conceive at certain seasons their kind only. We hear and apprehend only what we already half know.
Henry David Thoreau
I hear many condemn these men because they were so few. When were the good and the brave ever in a majority? Would you have had him wait till that time came?--till you and I came over to him?
Henry David Thoreau
The law will never make a man free it is men who have got to make the law free.
Henry David Thoreau
He is the best sailor who can steer within the fewest points of the wind, and extract a motive power out of the greatest obstacles. Most begin to veer and tack as soon as the wind changes from aft, and as within the tropics it does not blow from all points of the compass, there are some harbors which they can never reach.
Henry David Thoreau
The Mississippi, the Ganges, and the Nile,... the Rocky Mountains, the Himmaleh, and Mountains of the Moon, have a kind of personal importance in the annals of the world.
Henry David Thoreau
Why look in the dark for light?
Henry David Thoreau
In the long run, we only hit what we aim at.
Henry David Thoreau
We cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun he is no more humane, while his education has been sadly neglected.
Henry David Thoreau
Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights.
Henry David Thoreau
That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest.
Henry David Thoreau
In Adam's fall We sinned all. In the new Adam's rise, We shall all reach the skies.
Henry David Thoreau
The most alive is the wildest.
Henry David Thoreau
I make my own time. I make my own terms. I cannot see how God or Nature can ever get the start of me.
Henry David Thoreau
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
One cannot too soon forget his errors and misdemeanors for to dwell long upon them is to add to the offense, and repentance and sorrow can only be displaced by somewhat better, and which is as free and original as if they had not been.
Henry David Thoreau
The most attractive sentences are not perhaps the wisest, but the surest and soundest.
Henry David Thoreau
Could slavery suggest a more complete servility than some of these journals exhibit? Is there any dust which their conduct does not lick, and make fouler still with its slime?
Henry David Thoreau
We should endeavor practically in our lives to correct all the defects which our imagination detects.
Henry David Thoreau
There may be an excess of cultivation as well as of anything else, until civilization becomes pathetic. A highly cultivated man,--all whose bones can be bent! whose heaven-born virtues are but good manners!
Henry David Thoreau
The gods cannot misunderstand, man cannot explain.
Henry David Thoreau
