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Henry David Thoreau Quotes - Page 111

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Can there be any greater reproach than an idle learning? Learn to split wood, at least.

Can there be any greater reproach than an idle learning? Learn to split wood, at least.

Henry David Thoreau
Education, Splits, Woods
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.516, Simon and Schuster

The schools begin with what they call the elements, and where do they end?

Henry David Thoreau
Education, School, Elements
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.369, Penguin

When the State wishes to endow an academy or university, it grants it a tract of forest land: one saw represents an academy, a gang, a university.

Henry David Thoreau
Education, Land, Wish
Henry David Thoreau, David Gross (2007). “The Price of Freedom: Political Philosophy from Thoreau's Journals”, p.174, David M Gross

What avail all your scholarly accomplishments and learning, compared with wisdom and manhood? To omit his other behavior, see whata work this comparatively unread and unlettered man wrote within six weeks. Where is our professor of belles-lettres, or of logic and rhetoric, who can write so well?

Henry David Thoreau
Education, Writing, Men
Henry David Thoreau (2007). “My Thoughts Are Murder to the State: Thoreau's Essays on Political Philosophy”, p.67, David M Gross

As with our colleges, so with a hundred "modern improvements"; there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance. The devil goes on exacting a compound interest to the last for his early share and numerous succeeding investments in them.

Henry David Thoreau
Education, College, Progress
Henry David Thoreau (1882). “Walden”, p.84

Perhaps anxious politicians may prove that only seventeen white men and five negroes were concerned in the late enterprise; but their very anxiety to prove this might suggest to themselves that all is not told. Why do they still dodge the truth? They are so anxious because of a dim consciousness of the fact, which they do not distinctly face, that at least a million of the free inhabitants of the United States would have rejoiced if it had succeeded. They at most only criticise the tactics.

Henry David Thoreau
Men, White, Anxiety
Henry David Thoreau, Nancy L. Rosenblum (1996). “Thoreau: Political Writings”, p.142, Cambridge University Press

I find it so difficult to dispose of the few facts which to me are significant, that I hesitate to burden my attention with thosewhich are insignificant, which only a divine mind could illustrate. Such is, for the most part, the news in newspapers and conversation.

Henry David Thoreau
Mind, Attention, News
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.1166, Delphi Classics

We are double-edged blades, and every time we whet our virtue the return stroke straps our vice. Where is the skillful swordsman who can give clean wounds, and not rip up his work with the other edge?

Henry David Thoreau
Rip, Evil, Giving
Henry David Thoreau (1996). “The nature writings of Henry David Thoreau”

To the virtuous man, the universe is the only sanctum sanctorum, and the penetralia of the temple are the broad noon of his existence.

Henry David Thoreau
Men, Noon, Temples
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.235, Delphi Classics

Many expressions in the New Testament come naturally to the lips of all Protestants, and it furnishes the most pregnant and practical texts. There is no harmless dreaming, no wise speculation in it, but everywhere a substratum of good sense. It never reflects, but it repents. There is no poetry in it, we may say, nothing regarded in the light of beauty merely, but moral truth is its object. All mortals are convicted by its conscience.

Henry David Thoreau
Wise, Dream, Light
Henry David Thoreau (2017). “The Most Alive is the Wildest – Thoreau’s Complete Works on Living in Harmony with the Nature: Walden, Walking, Night and Moonlight, The Highland Light, A Winter Walk, The Maine Woods, A Walk to Wachusett, The Landlord, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Autumnal Tints, Wild Apples…”, p.327, e-artnow

The life of a good man will hardly improve us more than the life of a freebooter, for the inevitable laws appear as plainly in theinfringement as in the observance, and our lives are sustained by a nearly equal expense of virtue of some kind. The decaying tree, while yet it lives, demands sun, wind, and rain no less than the green one. It secretes sap and performs the functions of health. If we choose, we may study the alburnum only. The gnarled stump has as tender a bud as the sapling.

Henry David Thoreau
Rain, Men, Wind
Henry David Thoreau (2017). “The Most Alive is the Wildest – Thoreau’s Complete Works on Living in Harmony with the Nature: Walden, Walking, Night and Moonlight, The Highland Light, A Winter Walk, The Maine Woods, A Walk to Wachusett, The Landlord, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Autumnal Tints, Wild Apples…”, p.299, e-artnow

Men have a singular desire to be good without being good for anything, because, perchance, they think vaguely that so it will be good for them in the end.

Henry David Thoreau
Men, Thinking, Desire
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.96, Penguin

Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep.

Henry David Thoreau
Sleep, Effort, Reform
Henry David Thoreau (1882). “Walden”, p.142

The Jesuits were quite balked by those Indians who, being burned at the stake, suggested new modes of tortures to their tormentors. Being superior to physical suffering, it sometimes chanced that they were superior to any consolation which the missionaries could offer; and the law to do as you would be done by fell with less persuasiveness on the ears of those who, for their part, did not care how they were done by, who loved their enemies after a new fashion, and came very near freely forgiving them all they did.

Henry David Thoreau
Fashion, Law, Forgiving
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.53, Graphic Arts Books

No man loses ever on a lower level by magnanimity on a higher.

Henry David Thoreau
Men, Levels, Morality
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.193, Graphic Arts Books

If a man were to place himself in an attitude to bear manfully the greatest evil that can be inflicted on him, he would find suddenly that there was no such evil to bear; his brave back would go a-begging.

Henry David Thoreau
Attitude, Men, Evil
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Familiar Letters (Annotated Edition)”, p.190, Jazzybee Verlag

All health and success does me good, however far off and withdrawn it may appear; all disease and failure helps to make me sad anddoes me evil, however much sympathy it may have with me or I with it.

Henry David Thoreau
Success, Health, Evil
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “Walden”, p.56, Xist Publishing

Consider the islands bearing the names of all the saints, bristling with forts like chestnut-burs, or Echinidæ, yet the police will not let a couple of Irishmen have a private sparring- match on one of them, as it is a government monopoly; all the great seaports are in a boxing attitude, and you must sail prudently between two tiers of stony knuckles before you come to feel the warmth of their breasts.

Henry David Thoreau
Couple, Attitude, Sea

Why will we be imposed on by antiquity?

Henry David Thoreau
Independence, Originality, Tradition
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.107, Xist Publishing

This generation has come into the world fatally late for some enterprises. Go where we will on the surface of things, men have been there before us.... But the lives of men, though more extended laterally in their range, are still as shallow as ever.

Henry David Thoreau
Men, This Generation, Pioneers
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.244, Courier Corporation

We say justly that the weak person is flat, for, like all flat substances, he does not stand in the direction of his strength, that is, on his edge, but affords a convenient surface to put upon. He slides all the way through life.... But the brave man is a perfect sphere, which cannot fall on its flat side and is equally strong every way.

Henry David Thoreau
Strength, Strong, Fall
Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.8, Courier Corporation

I have much to learn of the Indian, nothing of the missionary.

Henry David Thoreau
Native American, Missionary, Christianity
Henry David Thoreau (1873). “The Maine Woods”, p.186

There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dullness. When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics and shopkeepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all the afternoon too, sitting with crossed legs, so many of them - as if the legs were made to sit upon, and not to stand or walk upon.

Henry David Thoreau
Novelty, Sitting, Afternoon

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
Men, Complaining, Might

How many a poor immortal soul I have met well-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it [an oversized home].

Henry David Thoreau
Home, Soul, Pushing

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