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Henry David Thoreau Quotes - Page 73

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The authority of government . . . can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it.

The authority of government . . . can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it.

Henry David Thoreau
Government, Liberty, Authority
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.211, Graphic Arts Books

Nature is fair in proportion as the youth is pure. The heavens and the earth are one flower ; the earth is the calyx, the heavens the corolla.

Henry David Thoreau
Nature, Flower, Heaven
Henry David Thoreau, John C. Broderick, Robert Sattelmeyer, Sandra Harbert Petrulionis (1981). “Journal”, p.180, Princeton University Press

Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads.

Henry David Thoreau
Love, Sympathy, Patriotic
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “Walden”, p.228, Xist Publishing

I have been breaking silence these twenty-three years and have hardly made a rent in it.

Henry David Thoreau
Years, Silence, Twenties
Henry David Thoreau (2011). “The Journal of Henry David Thoreau, 1837-1861”, p.17, New York Review of Books

No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow.

Henry David Thoreau
Trust, Thinking, Echoes
Henry David Thoreau (1882). “Walden”, p.16

We falsely attribute to men a determined character - putting together all their yesterdays - and averaging them - we presume we know them. Pity the man who has character to support - it is worse than a large family - he is the silent poor indeed.

Henry David Thoreau
Family, Character, Men
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.2077, Delphi Classics

Shall I not rejoice also at the abundance of the weeds whose seeds are the granary of the birds?

Henry David Thoreau
Weed, Garden, Bird
Henry David Thoreau, Joseph O. Valentine, Thoreau Society (2001). “Thoreau on Land: Nature's Canvas”, p.59, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I was determined to know beans.

Henry David Thoreau
Education, Teaching, Learning
1854 Walden, or Life in the Woods,'The Bean-Field'.

Our manners have been corrupted by communication with the saints. Our hymn-books resound with a melodious cursing of God and enduring Him forever. One would say that even the prophets and redeemers had rather consoled the fears than confirmed the hopes of man. There is nowhere recorded a simple and irrepressible satisfaction with the gift of life, any memorable praise of God.

Henry David Thoreau
Book, Communication, Memorable
Henry David Thoreau (2004). “Walden: 150th Anniversary Illustrated Edition of the American Classic”, p.75, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Each humblest plant, or weed, as we call it, stands there to express some thought or mood of ours; and yet how long it stands in vain!... Beauty and true wealth are always thus cheap and despised.

Henry David Thoreau
Beauty, Weed, Long
Henry David Thoreau, Jeffrey S. Cramer (2007). “I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau”, p.158, Yale University Press

The world, which the Greeks called Beauty, has been made such by being gradually divested of every ornament which was not fitted to endure.

Henry David Thoreau
Beauty, Greek, Ornaments
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.517, Simon and Schuster

All men are really most attracted by the beauty of plain speech, and they even write in a florid style in imitation of this. Theyprefer to be misunderstood rather than to come short of its exuberance.

Henry David Thoreau
Beauty, Writing, Men
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.516, Simon and Schuster

It is comparatively a faint and reflected beauty that is admired, not an essential and intrinsic one. It is because the old are weak, feel their mortality, and think that they have measured the strength of man. They will not boast; they will be frank and humble. Well, let them have the few poor comforts they can keep. Humility is still a very human virtue. They look back on life, and so see not into the future. The prospect of the young is forward and unbounded, mingling the future with the present.

Henry David Thoreau
Beauty, Humility, Humble
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.110, Delphi Classics

Men nowhere, east or west, live yet a natural life, round which the vine clings, and which the elm willingly shadows. Man would desecrate it by his touch, and so the beauty of the world remains veiled to him. He needs not only to be spiritualized, but naturalized, on the soil of earth.

Henry David Thoreau
Life, Beauty, Nature
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.269, Xist Publishing

Let the beautiful laws prevail. Let us not weary ourselves by resisting them.

Henry David Thoreau
Beauty, Beautiful, Law
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.361, Penguin

Whatever beauty we behold, the more it is distant, serene, and cold, the purer and more durable it is. It is better to warm ourselves with ice than with fire.

Henry David Thoreau
Beauty, Fire, Ice
Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1865). “Letters to Various Persons”, p.194

While almost all men feel an attraction drawing them to society, few are attracted strongly to Nature. In their reaction to Naturemen appear to me for the most part, notwithstanding their arts, lower than the animals. It is not often a beautiful relation, as in the case of the animals. How little appreciation of the beauty of the landscape there is among us! We have to be told that the Greeks called the world Kosmos, Beauty, or Order, but we do not see clearly why they did so, and we esteem it at best only a curious philological fact.

Henry David Thoreau
Beauty, Beautiful, Appreciation
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.410, Penguin

In the mythus a superhuman intelligence uses the unconscious thoughts and dreams of men as its hieroglyphics to address men unborn.

Henry David Thoreau
Dream, Men, Thinking
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.43, Xist Publishing

As our domestic fowls are said to have their original in the wild pheasant of India, so our domestic thoughts have their prototypes in the thoughts of her philosophers.

Henry David Thoreau
Philosophical, Thoughtful, Thinking
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.105, Xist Publishing

It is not easy to make our lives respectable by any course of activity. We must repeatedly withdraw into our shells of thought, like the tortoise, somewhat helplessly; yet there is more than philosophy in that.

Henry David Thoreau
Philosophy, Philosophical, Thinking
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Familiar Letters (Annotated Edition)”, p.148, Jazzybee Verlag

Think of admitting the details of a single case of the criminal court into our thoughts, to stalk profanely through their very sanctum sanctorum for an hour, ay, for many hours! to make a very barroom of the mind's inmost apartment, as if for so long the dust of the street had occupied us,--the very street itself, with all its travel, its bustle, and filth, had passed through our thoughts' shrine! Would it not be an intellectual and moral suicide?

Henry David Thoreau
Suicide, Thinking, Thoughtful
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.418, Simon and Schuster

We belong to the community. It is not the tailor alone who is the ninth part of a man; it is as much the preacher, and the merchant, and the farmer. Where is this division of labor to end? and what object does it finally serve? No doubt another may also think for me; but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself.

Henry David Thoreau
Men, Thinking, Thoughtful
Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Walden”, p.45, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

It is true, we are such poor navigators that our thoughts, for the most part, stand off and on upon a harborless coast, are conversant only with the bights of the bays of poesy, or steer for the public ports of entry, and go into the dry docks of science, where they merely refit for this world, and no natural currents concur to individualize them.

Henry David Thoreau
Knowledge, Thinking, Thoughtful
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.490, Delphi Classics

One inconvenience I sometimes experienced in so small a house, the difficulty of getting to a sufficient distance from my guest when we began to utter the big thoughts in big words. You want room for your thoughts to get into sailing trim and run a course or two before they make their port. The bullet of your thought must have overcome its lateral and ricochet motion and fallen into its last and steady course before it reaches the ear of the hearer, else it may plow out again through the side of his head.

Henry David Thoreau
Running, Distance, Communication
Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Walden”, p.91, Cosimo, Inc.

As polishing expresses the vein in marble, and grain in wood, so music brings out what of heroic lurks anywhere. The hero is the sole patron of music.

Henry David Thoreau
Music, Hero, Veins
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.123, Xist Publishing

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