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Henry David Thoreau was an American essayist, poet, and philosopher. He is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay "Civil Disobedience" (originally published as "Resistance to Civil Government"), an argument for disobedience to an unjust state.

Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts in 1817. He attended Harvard University, where he studied the classics and philosophy. After graduating, he taught school for a short time before deciding to devote himself to writing.

In 1845, Thoreau built a small cabin on Walden Pond, where he lived for two years. During this time, he wrote Walden, which was published in 1854. In Walden, Thoreau argues that people should simplify their lives and live in harmony with nature.

Thoreau was also a strong advocate of civil disobedience. In 1846, he refused to pay his poll tax in protest of the Mexican-American War. He was briefly jailed for his refusal, but his act of civil disobedience inspired many others, including Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

Thoreau died in 1862 at the age of 44. He is considered one of the most important figures in American literature and thought.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Henry David Thoreau

inspirational quotes - Image for quote : The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

Henry David Thoreau

The question is not what you look at, but what you see.

Henry David Thoreau

It is not worth the while to let our imperfections disturb us always.

Henry David Thoreau

Men are born to succeed, not to fail.

Henry David Thoreau

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

Henry David Thoreau

When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality.

Henry David Thoreau

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

Henry David Thoreau

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

Henry David Thoreau

What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.

Henry David Thoreau

I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours..

Henry David Thoreau

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

Henry David Thoreau

Any fool can make a ruleAnd any fool will mind it.

Henry David Thoreau

Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.

Henry David Thoreau

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

Henry David Thoreau

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

Henry David Thoreau

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.

Henry David Thoreau

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.

Henry David Thoreau

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

Henry David Thoreau

It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?

Henry David Thoreau

The language of Friendship is not words, but meanings.

Henry David Thoreau

We are constantly invited to be what we are.

Henry David Thoreau

Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. what a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.

Henry David Thoreau

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