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Henry David Thoreau Quotes - Page 42

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What is religion? That which is never spoken.

What is religion? That which is never spoken.

Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau (2011). “The Journal of Henry David Thoreau, 1837-1861”, p.511, New York Review of Books

Instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them.

Henry David Thoreau
Men, Study, Selling
Henry David Thoreau (1882). “Walden”, p.33

I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born?

Henry David Thoreau
Eye, Men, House
Henry David Thoreau, Nancy L. Rosenblum (1996). “Thoreau: Political Writings”, p.24, Cambridge University Press

Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence.

Henry David Thoreau
Paper, Vote, Influence
Henry David Thoreau (1942). “Civil Disobedience”, p.11, Hayes Barton Press

Direct your eye inward, and you'll find / A thousand regions in your mind / Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be / Expert in home-cosmography

Henry David Thoreau
Home, Eye, Mind
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “Walden”, p.227, Xist Publishing

Art is not tame, and Nature is not wild, in the ordinary sense. A perfect work of man's art would also be wild or natural in a good sense.

Henry David Thoreau
Art, Men, Perfect
Henry David Thoreau (1873). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.335

Can we not do without the society of our gossip a little while, - have our own thoughts to cheer us?

Henry David Thoreau
Cheer, Gossip, Littles
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.86, Graphic Arts Books

Life is so short that it is not wise to take roundabout ways, nor can we spend much time in waiting.... We have not got half-way to dawn yet.

Henry David Thoreau
Life, Wise, Waiting
Henry David Thoreau (1974). “The correspondence of Henry David Thoreau”, Greenwood Pub Group

Steady labor with the hands, which engrosses the attention also, is unquestionably the best method of removing palaver and sentimentality out of one's style, both of speaking and writing.

Henry David Thoreau
Writing, Hands, Style
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.517, Simon and Schuster

There are none happy in the world but beings who enjoy freely a vast horizon.

Henry David Thoreau
Horizon, World, Enjoy
Henry David Thoreau (1882). “Walden”, p.138

The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit ~ not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic. Its throes will heave our exuviæ from their graves ... You may melt your metals and cast them into the most beautiful moulds you can; they will never excite me like the forms which this molten earth flows out into.

Henry David Thoreau
Beautiful, Nature, Flower
Henry David Thoreau (2017). “HENRY DAVID THOREAU - Ultimate Collection: 6 Books, 26 Essays & 60+ Poems, Including Translations. Biographies & Letters (Illustrated): Walden, The Maine Woods, Cape Cod, A Yankee in Canada, Canoeing in the Wilderness, Civil Disobedience, Slavery in Massachusetts, Life Without Principle, Excursions, Poems of Nature, Familiar Letters…”, p.192, e-artnow

We seem to have forgotten that the expression "a liberal education" originally meant among the Romans one worthy of free men; while the learning of trades and professions by which to get your livelihood merely, was considered worthy of slaves only. But taking a hint from the word, I would go a step further and say, that it is not the man of wealth and leisure simply, though devoted to art, or science, or literature, who, in a true sense, is liberally educated, but only the earnest and free man.

Henry David Thoreau
Education, Art, Men
Henry David Thoreau (1999). “Uncommon Learning: Thoreau on Education”, p.63, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The man of genius, like a dog with a bone, or the slave who has swallowed a diamond, or a patient with the gravel, sits afar and retired, off the road, hangs out no sign of refreshment for man and beast, but says, by all possible hints and signs, I wish to be alone,--good-by,--fare-well. But the Landlord can afford to live without privacy.

Henry David Thoreau
Dog, Men, Solitude
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.1020, Delphi Classics

Books are to be distinguished by the grandeur of their topics even more than by the manner in which they are treated.

Henry David Thoreau
Book, Topics, Distinguished
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.113, Delphi Classics

I long for wildness, a nature which I cannot put my foot through, woods where the wood thrush forever sings, where the hours are early morning ones, and there is dew on the grass, and the day is forever unproved, where I might have a fertile unknown for a soil about me.

Henry David Thoreau
Morning, Nature, Feet
Henry David Thoreau, Ronald A. Bosco (2005). “Nature's Panorama: Thoreau on the Seasons”, p.28, Univ of Massachusetts Press

I am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a bumblebee. I am no more lonely than the Mill Brook, or a weathercock, or the north star, or the south wind, or an April shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new house.

Henry David Thoreau
Lonely, Horse, Stars
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.84, Simon and Schuster

See how he cowers and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears, not being immortal nor divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds. 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
Fate, Men, Thinking
Henry David Thoreau (2004). “Walden: 150th Anniversary Illustrated Edition of the American Classic”, p.5, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man.

Henry David Thoreau
Men, Ninety Nine, Virtue
Henry David Thoreau, Nancy L. Rosenblum (1996). “Thoreau: Political Writings”, p.6, Cambridge University Press

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail.

Henry David Thoreau
Simple, Two, Simplicity
Henry David Thoreau (1882). “Walden”, p.144

A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips; -- not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself.

Henry David Thoreau
Art, May, Lips
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “Walden; Or, Life in the Woods”, p.67, Courier Corporation

To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will tax the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.

Henry David Thoreau
Book, Athlete, Exercise

My life has been the poem I would have writ, But I could not both live and utter it.

Henry David Thoreau
Poetry, Has Beens
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Quotable Thoreau: An A to Z Glossary of Inspiring Quotations from Henry David Thoreau”, p.59, BookBaby

'Tis healthy to be sick sometimes.

Henry David Thoreau
Health, Sick, Healthy
Henry David Thoreau, Barry Andrews (2005). “True Harvest: Readings from Henry David Thoreau for Every Day of the Year”, p.275, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations

Being is the great explainer.

Henry David Thoreau
Inspirational, Being Sad, Literature
1841 Journal entry, 26 Feb.

Thus the State never intentionally confronts a man's sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion.

Henry David Thoreau
Fashion, Honesty, Men
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Selected Essays of Henry David Thoreau”, p.108, Simon and Schuster

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