Quote

If the tax-gatherer, or any other public officer, asks me, as one has done, But what shall I do? my answer is, If you really wish to do anything, resign your office. When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished.

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
Answers
Officers
Shall
Accomplished
Gatherer
Public
Subject
Resign
Asks
Taxes
Resigned
Wish
Answer
Officer
Anything
Revolution
Refused
Done
Subjects
Disobedience
Really
Office
Allegiance

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We slander the hyena man is the fiercest and cruelest animal.
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A man may acquire a taste for wine or brandy, and so lose his love for water, but should we not pity him.
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There are two classes of authors: the one write the history of their times, the other their biography.
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You never gain something but that you lose something.
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What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary?
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You must get your living by loving. But as it is said of the merchants that ninety-seven in a hundred fail, so the life of men generally, tried by this standard, is a failure, and bankruptcy may be surely prophesied.
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Where there is not discernment, the behavior even of the purest soul may in effect amount to coarseness.
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What are men celebrating? They are all on a committee of arrangements, and hourly expect a speech from somebody. God is only the president of the day, and Webster is his orator.
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Who that has heard a strain of music feared then lest he should speak extravagantly any more forever?
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It is remarkable that among all the preachers there are so few moral teachers. The prophets are employed in excusing the ways of men.
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. . . I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days. . . .
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A Friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us.
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It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.
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Rescue the drowning and tie your shoestrings.
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What wealth is it to have such friends that we cannot think of them without elevation!
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As far as our noblest hardwood forests are concerned, the animals, especially squirrels and jays, are our greatest and almost only benefactors. It is to them that we owe this gift. It is not in vain that the squirrels live in or about every forest tree, or hollow log, and every wall and heap of stones.
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The works of great poets have never been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them.
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Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve.
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Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing.
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