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Henry David Thoreau Quotes - Page 63

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Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resigns his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.

Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resigns his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.

Henry David Thoreau
Men, Thinking, Degrees
Henry David Thoreau (1942). “Civil Disobedience”, p.3, Hayes Barton Press

Homer and Shakespeare and Milton and Marvell and Wordsworth are but the rustling of leaves and crackling of twigs in the forest, and there is not yet the sound of any bird. The Muse has never lifted up her voice to sing.

Henry David Thoreau
Voice, Bird, Sound
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.233, Delphi Classics

A man's social and spiritual discipline must answer to his corporeal. He must lean on a friend who has a hard breast, as he wouldlie on a hard bed. He must drink cold water for his only beverage. So he must not hear sweetened and colored words, but pure and refreshing truths. He must daily bathe in truth cold as spring water, not warmed by the sympathy of friends.

Henry David Thoreau
Friendship, Spiritual, Spring
Henry David Thoreau (2017). “HENRY DAVID THOREAU – The Man, The Philosopher & The Trailblazer (Illustrated): Biographies, Memoirs, Autobiographical Books & Personal Letters (Including Walden, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, The Maine Woods, Cape Cod, A Yankee in Canada…)”, p.1302, e-artnow

The village is the place to which the roads tend, a sort of expansion of the highway, as a lake of a river.... The word is from the Latin villa, which together with via, a way, or more anciently ved and vella, Varro derives from veho, to carry, because the villa is the place to and from which things are carried.... Hence, too, the Latin word vilis and our vile, also villain. This suggests what kind of degeneracy villagers are liable to. They are wayworn by the travel that goes by and over them, without traveling themselves.

Henry David Thoreau
Travel, Latin, Lakes

The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality.

Henry David Thoreau
Truth, Knowledge, Reality
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.132, Graphic Arts Books

The fire is the main comfort of the camp, whether in summer or winter, and is about as ample at one season as at another. It is as well for cheerfulness as for warmth and dryness.

Henry David Thoreau
Summer, Winter, Fire
Henry David Thoreau (1873). “The Maine Woods”, p.38

I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. [It allows you to] be the Mungo Park, the Lewis and Clark of your own streams and oceans; [to] explore your own higher latitudes; [to] be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.

Henry David Thoreau
Ocean, Solitude, Parks

When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left.

Henry David Thoreau
Wisdom, Mean, Men
Henry David Thoreau, Nancy L. Rosenblum (1996). “Thoreau: Political Writings”, p.27, Cambridge University Press

To preserve wild animals implies generally the creation of a forest for them to dwell in or resort to. So it is with man. A hundred years ago they sold bark in our streets peeled from our own woods. In the very aspect of those primitive and rugged trees there was, methinks, a tanning principle which hardened and consolidated the fibres of men's thoughts. Ah! already I shudder for these comparatively degenerate days of my native village, when you cannot collect a load of bark of good thickness, and we no longer produce tar and turpentine.

Henry David Thoreau
Animal, Men, Years
Henry David Thoreau (1993). “Civil Disobedience, and Other Essays”, p.63, Courier Corporation

By avarice and selfishness, and a groveling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a robber.

Henry David Thoreau
Mean, Selfishness, Landscape
Henry David Thoreau, Michael McCurdy, Terry Tempest Williams (2010). “Walden”, p.88, Shambhala Publications

Most are engaged in business the greater part of their lives, because the soul abhors a vacuum and they have not discovered any continuous employment for man's nobler faculties.

Henry David Thoreau
Life, Business, Men
Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.129, Courier Corporation

We are not a religious people, but we are a nation of politicians. We do not care for the Bible, but we do care for the newspaper.At any meeting of politicianshow impertinent it would be to quote from the Bible! how pertinent to quote from a newspaper or from the Constitution!

Henry David Thoreau
Religious, People, Religion

Very few men can speak of Nature, for instance, with any truth. They overstep her modesty, somehow or other, and confer no favor.They do not speak a good word for her. Most cry better than they speak, and you can get more nature out of them by pinching than by addressing them. The surliness with which the woodchopper speaks of his woods, handling them as indifferently as his axe, is better than the mealy-mouthed enthusiasm of the lover of nature. Better that the primrose by the river's brim be a yellow primrose, and nothing more, than that it be something less.

Henry David Thoreau
Nature, Men, Rivers
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.76, Xist Publishing

As every season seems best to us in its turn, so the coming in of spring is like the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos and the realization of the Golden Age.

Henry David Thoreau
Spring, Age, Cosmos
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.324, Penguin

A temple, you know, was anciently "an open place without a roof," whose walls served merely to shut out the world and direct the mind toward heaven; but a modern meeting-house shuts out the heavens, while it crowds the world into still closer quarters.

Henry David Thoreau
Wall, Heaven, House
Henry David Thoreau, Joseph O. Valentine, Thoreau Society (2001). “Thoreau on Land: Nature's Canvas”, p.37, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

He who is conversant with the supernal powers will not worship these inferior deities of the wind, waves, tide, and sunshine. Butwe would not disparage the importance of such calculations as we have described. They are truths in physics because they are true in ethics.

Henry David Thoreau
Nature, Science, Sunshine
Henry David Thoreau (2007). “My Thoughts Are Murder to the State: Thoreau's Essays on Political Philosophy”, p.140, David M Gross

Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every shrub and tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit.

Henry David Thoreau
Rivers, Perfect, Tree
Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.56, Courier Corporation

Every man who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best condition, has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food

Henry David Thoreau
Philosophical, Animal, Men
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.131, Graphic Arts Books

The dry grasses are not dead for me. A beautiful form has as much life at one season as another.

Henry David Thoreau
Beautiful, Dry, Grass
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.2216, Delphi Classics

It is only necessary to behold the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair's breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance ... To perceive freshly, with fresh senses is to be inspired.

Henry David Thoreau
Beauty, Hair, Vision
Henry David Thoreau (2011). “The Journal of Henry David Thoreau, 1837-1861”, p.349, New York Review of Books

We should come home from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day with new experience and character.

Henry David Thoreau
Travel, Home, Adventure
Henry David Thoreau, Laura Ross (2009). “Walden, Or, Life in the Woods: Bold-faced Ideas for Living a Truly Transcendent Life”, p.273, Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.

I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home. I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful.

Henry David Thoreau
Happiness, Beautiful, Home
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “Selections from the Journals”, p.34, Courier Corporation

The sail, the play of its pulse so like our own lives: so thin and yet so full of life, so noiseless when it labors hardest, so noisy and impatient when least effective.

Henry David Thoreau
Play, Sailing, Pulse
Henry David Thoreau (1873). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.381

Methinks my own soul must be a bright invisible green.

Henry David Thoreau
Garden, Soul, Religion
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.169, Xist Publishing

A farmer, a hunter, a soldier, a reporter, even a philosopher, may be daunted; but nothing can deter a poet, for he is actuated by pure love. Who can predict his comings and goings? His business calls him out at all hours, even when doctors sleep.

Henry David Thoreau
Love, Business, Philosophy
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.300, Penguin

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