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When a man's conscience and the laws clash, it is his conscience that he must follow.
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
Must
Men
Clash
Conscience
Laws
Follow
Law
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
I am a good horse to travel, but not from choice a roadster. The landscape-painter uses the figures of men to mark a road. He would not make that use of my figure.
Henry David Thoreau
The best books are not read even by those who are called good readers. What does our Concord culture amount to? There is in this town, with a very few exceptions, no taste for the best or for very good books even in English literature, whose words all can read and spell.
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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?
Henry David Thoreau
Some do not walk at all others walk in the highways a few walk across lots.
Henry David Thoreau
I do not speak to those who are well employed, in whatever circumstances, and they know whether they are well employed or not but mainly to the mass of men who are discontented, and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they might improve them.
Henry David Thoreau
There is a chasm between knowledge and ignorance which the arches of science can never span.
Henry David Thoreau
Books are for the most part willfully and hastily written, as parts of a system to supply a want real or imagined.
Henry David Thoreau
He who eats the fruit should at least plant the seed ay, if possible, a better seed than that whose fruit he has enjoyed.
Henry David Thoreau
Some would find fault with the morning, if they ever got up early enough.. The fault find faults even in Paradise.
Henry David Thoreau
Fire is the most tolerable third party
Henry David Thoreau
It is remarkable that there is little or nothing to be remembered written on the subject of getting a living: how to make getting a living not merely honest and honorable, but altogether inviting and glorious for if getting a living is not so, then living is not.
Henry David Thoreau
Goodness is the only investment that never fails.
Henry David Thoreau
Let the beautiful laws prevail. Let us not weary ourselves by resisting them.
Henry David Thoreau
It would seem as if the very language of our parlors would lose all its nerve and degenerate into palaver wholly, our lives pass at such remoteness from its symbols, and its metaphors and tropes are necessarily so far fetched.
Henry David Thoreau
We are older by faith than by experience.
Henry David Thoreau
The book exists for us, perchance, which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones.
Henry David Thoreau
All that man has to say or do that can possibly concern mankind is in some shape or other to tell the story of his love-to sing, and, if he is fortunate and keeps alive, he will be forever in love.
Henry David Thoreau
In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.
Henry David Thoreau
There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages.
Henry David Thoreau
If there is nothing new on the earth, still the traveler always has a resource in the skies. They are constantly turning a new page to view. The wind sets the types on this blue ground, and the inquiring may always read a new truth there.
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