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Henry David Thoreau Quotes - Page 57

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I have a deep sympathy with war; it so apes the gait and bearing of the soul.

I have a deep sympathy with war; it so apes the gait and bearing of the soul.

Henry David Thoreau
Sympathy, War, Soul
Henry David Thoreau, David Gross (2007). “The Price of Freedom: Political Philosophy from Thoreau's Journals”, p.14, David M Gross

Cast your whole vote, not a piece of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless when it conforms to a majority; but is irresistable when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose.

Henry David Thoreau
Giving Up, Fear, War
Henry David Thoreau (1942). “Civil Disobedience”, p.11, Hayes Barton Press

The intellect of most men is barren. They neither fertilize or are fertilized. It is the marriage of the soul with nature that makes the intellect fruitful, that gives birth to imagination...without nature-awakened imagination most persons do not really live in the world, they merely pass through it as they live dull lives of quiet desperation.

Henry David Thoreau
Gratitude, Men, Dull Life

Everything counts for gain when we are cosmically awake. Nothing counts, unless we are awake. No enjoyments last, no successes satisfy, no gains have meaning unless accomplished in a state of wakefulness.

Henry David Thoreau
Powerful, Lasts, Gains

I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself.

Henry David Thoreau
Reading, Library, Nine
Henry David Thoreau, Jeffrey S. Cramer (2007). “I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau”, p.207, Yale University Press

The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it.

Henry David Thoreau
Government, People, Liable
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.197, Graphic Arts Books

Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage.

Henry David Thoreau
Men, Government, Advantage
Henry David Thoreau (1942). “Civil Disobedience”, p.2, Hayes Barton Press

It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such.

Henry David Thoreau
Dream, Bogs, Wilderness
David R. Foster, Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Thoreau's Country: Journey through a Transformed Landscape”, p.5, Harvard University Press

In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify.

Henry David Thoreau
Life, Creativity, Men
Henry David Thoreau (1882). “Walden”, p.144

The boy gathers materials for a temple, and then when he is thirty, concludes to build a woodshed.

Henry David Thoreau
Boys, Age, Mediocrity

My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to commune with the spirit of the universe, to be intoxicated with the fumes, call it, of that divine nectar, to bear my head through atmospheres and over heights unknown to my feet, is perennial and constant.

Henry David Thoreau
Feet, Atmosphere, Desire
Henry David Thoreau (1960). “H. D. Thoreau, a Writer's Journal”, p.26, Courier Corporation

We need the tonic of wildness.

Henry David Thoreau
Nature, Health, Environmental
"Bonds of Affection: Thoreau on Dogs and Cats".

We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the filed, but not to describe human character.

Henry David Thoreau
Character, Adequate, Language

I would remind my countrymen, that they are to be men first, and Americans only at a late and convenient hour. No matter how valuable law may be to protect your property, even to keep soul and body together, if it do not keep you and humanity together.

Henry David Thoreau
Responsibility, Men, Soul And Body
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.1151, Delphi Classics

What is wanted is men of principle, who recognize a higher law than the decision of the majority. The marines and the militia whose bodies were used lately were not men of sense nor of principle; in a high moral sense they were not men at all.

Henry David Thoreau
Responsibility, Marine, Men
Henry David Thoreau, David Gross (2007). “The Price of Freedom: Political Philosophy from Thoreau's Journals”, p.129, David M Gross

Most men, it seems to me, do not care for Nature and would sell their share in all her beauty, as long as they may live, for a stated sum - many for a glass of rum. Thank God, men cannot as yet fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth!

Henry David Thoreau
Men, Glasses, Sky
Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.217, Courier Corporation

It is a thorough process, this war with the wilderness - breaking nature, taming the soil. feeding it on oats. The civilized man regards the pine tree as his enemy. He will fell it and let in the light, grub it up and raise wheat or rye there. It is no better than a fungus to him.

Henry David Thoreau
War, Men, Light
David R. Foster, Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Thoreau's Country: Journey through a Transformed Landscape”, p.38, Harvard University Press

Why should not we, who have renounced the king's authority, have our national preserves, where no villages need be destroyed, in which the bear and panther, and some even of the hunter race, may still exist, and not be "civilized off the face of the earth," - our forests, not to hold the king's game merely, but to hold and preserve the king himself also, the lord of creation, - not for idle sport or food, but for inspiration and our own true re-creation?

Henry David Thoreau
Sports, Kings, Inspiration
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “The Maine Woods - The Writings of Henry David Thoreau”, p.102, Read Books Ltd

The very willow-rows lopped every three years for fuel or powder, - and every sizable pine and oak, or other forest tree, cut down within the memory of man! As if individual speculators were to be allowed to export the clouds out of the sky, or the stars out of the firmament, one by one. We shall be reduced to gnaw the very crust of the earth for nutriment.

Henry David Thoreau
Stars, Memories, Cutting
Henry David Thoreau (1873). “The Maine Woods”, p.158

It would be worth the while if in each town there were a committee appointed to see that the beauty of the town received no detriment. If we have the largest boulder in the county, then it should not belong to an individual, nor be made into door-steps.

Henry David Thoreau
Doors, Boulders, Would Be
Henry David Thoreau (1960). “H. D. Thoreau, a Writer's Journal”, p.226, Courier Corporation

We boast of our system of education, but why stop at schoolmasters and schoolhouses? We are all schoolmasters, and our schoolhouse is the universe. To attend chiefly to the desk or schoolhouse while we neglect the scenery in which it is placed is absurd. If we do not look out we shall find our find schoolhouse standing in a cow-yard at last.

Henry David Thoreau
Education, Yards, Looks
Henry David Thoreau, Joseph O. Valentine, Thoreau Society (2001). “Thoreau on Land: Nature's Canvas”, p.88, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Who is old enough to have learned from experience?

Henry David Thoreau
Experience, Enough
Henry David Thoreau, Bradford Torrey, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn (1906). “The Writings of Henry David Thoreau ....”

The value of any experience is measured, of course, not by the amount of money, but the amount of development we get out of it.

Henry David Thoreau
Experience, Development, Courses
Henry David Thoreau, David Gross (2007). “The Price of Freedom: Political Philosophy from Thoreau's Journals”, p.243, David M Gross

What we want is not mainly to colonize Nebraska with free men, but to colonize Massachusetts with free men-to be free ourselves. As the enterprise of a few individuals, that is brave and practical; but as the enterprise of the State, it is cowardice and imbecility. What odds where we squat, or bow much ground we cover? It is not the soil that we would make free, but men.

Henry David Thoreau
Freedom, Men, Odds
Henry David Thoreau, David Gross (2007). “The Price of Freedom: Political Philosophy from Thoreau's Journals”, p.135, David M Gross

The question is whether you can bear freedom. At present the vast majority of men, whether white or black, require the discipline of labor which enslaves them for their own good.

Henry David Thoreau
Freedom, Men, White

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