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Famous Quotes | The very fact that he had no...

The very fact that he had no rabble or troop of hirelings about him would alone distinguish him from ordinary heroes. His company was small indeed, because few could be found worthy to pass muster. Each one who there laid down his life for the poor and oppressed was a picked man,... a man of principle, of rare courage, and devoted humanity; ready to sacrifice his life at any moment for the benefit of his fellow-man. It may be doubted if there were as many more their equals in these respects in all the country.... These alone were ready to step between the oppressor and the oppressed. Surely they were the very best men you could select to be hung. That was the greatest compliment which this country could pay them. They were ripe for the gallows. She has tried a long time, she has hung a good many, but never found the right one before. - Henry David Thoreau Attribution: Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), U.S. philosopher, author, naturalist. “A Plea for Captain John Brown” (1859), in The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, vol. 4, p. 432, Houghton Mifflin (1906).

Categories: Author, Courage, Death, Heroes And Heroism, Naturalist, Philosopher

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Henry David Thoreau

Titles by Henry David Thoreau:

• Civil Disobedience
• Transcendentalism
• Walden

eNotes:

• Henry David Thoreau (The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail)
• Henry David Thoreau (Walden)
• Henry David Thoreau’s Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts (Transcendentalism)

Salem on History:

• Henry David Thoreau

Encyclopedia:

• Thoreau, Henry David (The Oxford Companion to American Military History)
• Thoreau, Henry David (The Oxford Companion to English Literature)
• Thoreau, Henry David (The Oxford Companion to American Literature)
• Thoreau, Henry David (West's Encyclopedia of American Law)

Salem on Literature:

• The Essays of Henry David Thoreau (Masterplots, Definitive Revised Edition)
• Henry David Thoreau (Ethics (Ready Reference series))
• Henry David Thoreau (Dictionary of World Biography: The 19th Century)
• Henry David Thoreau (Cyclopedia of World Authors)
• Henry David Thoreau (Critical Survey of Poetry)
• Henry David Thoreau (Censorship (Ready Reference series))
• Henry David Thoreau (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)

Primary Sources:

• John Brown and Henry David Thoreau (Terrorism Reference)

Literary Criticism:

• Thoreau, Henry David (Poetry Criticism)
• Walden; or, Life in the Woods Henry David Thoreau (Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism)
• A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Henry David Thoreau (Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism)

Calendar of Literary Facts:

• Henry David Thoreau dies
• Henry David Thoreau publishes Walden; or, Life in the Woods
• Henry David Thoreau establishes residence at a cabin on Walden Pond, outside Concord, Massachusetts
• Henry David Thoreau is born