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Any man knows when he is justified, and all the wits in the world cannot enlighten him on that point. The murderer always knows that he is justly punished but when a government takes the life of a man without the consent of his conscience, it is an audacious government, and is taking a step towards its own dissolution.

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
Life
Steps
Murderer
World
Takes
Consent
Enlighten
Point
Justified
Audacious
Cannot
Wit
Wits
Government
Towards
Justly
Without
Conscience
Dissolution
Always
Step
Punished
Men
Taking
Enlightening

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It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are... than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.
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It is tranquil people who accomplish much.
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The inhabitants of earth behold commonly but the dark and shadowy under side of heaven's pavement it is only when seen at a favorable angle in the horizon, morning or evening, that some faint streaks of the rich lining of the clouds are revealed.
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Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then.
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For eighteen hundred years, though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of legislation?
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I can alter my life by altering my attitude. He who would have nothing to do with thorns must never attempt to gather flowers.
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I fear that I have not got much to say about Canada, not having seen much what I got by going to Canada was a cold.
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Knowledge does not come to us in details, but in flashes of light from heaven.
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We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers.
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As they say in geology, time never fails, there is always enough of it, so I may say, criticism never fails.
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I would give all the wealth of the world, and all the deeds of all the heroes, for one true vision.
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I think that Nature meant kindly when she made our brothers few. However, my voice is still for peace.
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It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such. It is the bog in our brains and bowels, the primitive vigor of Nature in us, that inspires that dream. I shall never find in the wilds of Labrador a greater wildness than in some recess of Concord.
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Wherever a man separates from the multitude, and goes his own way in this mood, there indeed is a fork in the road, though ordinary travelers may see only a gap in the paling. His solitary path across lots will turn out the higher way of the two.
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The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.
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It is a momentous fact that a man may be good, or he may be bad his life may be true, or it may be false it may be either a shame or a glory to him. The good man builds himself up the bad man destroys himself.
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Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.
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Some would find fault with the morning, if they ever got up early enough.. The fault find faults even in Paradise.
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While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.
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There is in my nature, methinks, a singular yearning toward all wildness.
Henry David Thoreau