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Henry David Thoreau

Read through the most famous quotes from Henry David Thoreau




Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.


— Henry David Thoreau


#freedom #liberty #obedience #protest #slave

Things do not change; we change.


— Henry David Thoreau


#things

However mean your life is, meet it and live it.


— Henry David Thoreau


#hard-times #inspiration #life #inspirational

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity


— Henry David Thoreau


#wisdom #wisdom

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.


— Henry David Thoreau


#hope #failure

We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal and then leap in the dark to our success.


— Henry David Thoreau


#inspiration #inspirational

Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.


— Henry David Thoreau


#nature

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.


— Henry David Thoreau


#language #meanings #words

Men profess to be lovers of music, but for the most part they give no evidence in their opinions and lives that they have heard it.


— Henry David Thoreau


#men

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.


— Henry David Thoreau


#conformity #fool #foolishness #law #rule






About Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau Quotes




Did you know about Henry David Thoreau?

I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man; wine is not so noble a liquor. Of all ebriosity who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes?"


Social and political influence

Thoreau's political writings had little impact during his lifetime as "his contemporaries did not see him as a theorist or as a radical viewing him instead as a naturalist. A legend proposes that Thoreau refused to pay the five-dollar fee for a Harvard diploma.

Thoreau's books articles essays journals and poetry total over 20 volumes. His literary style interweaves close natural observation personal experience pointed rhetoric symbolic meanings and historical lore while displaying a poetic sensibility philosophical austerity and "Yankee" love of practical detail. He is best known for his book Walden a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings and his essay Civil Disobedience an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.

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