Famous quotes containing the words henry david thoreau, henry david, henry, david, thoreau, civil, disobedience, walden and/or years:
“No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The hard woods, occasionally occurring exclusively, were less wild to my eye. I fancied them ornamental grounds, with farmhouses in the rear.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“find out who it is that writes those lovely cracker mottoes!’
‘Tell me, Henry Wadsworth, Alfred, Poet Close, or Mister Tupper,
Do you write the bonbon mottoes my Elvira pulls at supper?’”
—Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911)
“There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“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 (1817–1862)
“What I fear is being in the presence of evil and doing nothing. I fear that more than death.”
—Otilia De Koster, Panamanian civil rights monitor. As quoted in Newsweek magazine, p. 15 (December 19, 1988)
“Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“The sturdy Irish arms that do the work are of more worth than oak or maple. Methinks I could look with equanimity upon a long street of Irish cabins, and pigs and children reveling in the genial Concord dirt; and I should still find my Walden Wood and Fair Haven in their tanned and happy faces.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The easiest way to get a reputation is to go outside the fold, shout around for a few years as a violent atheist or a dangerous radical, and then crawl back to the shelter.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)