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Henry David Thoreau Quotes - Page 79

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I do not know but it is too much to read one newspaper a week. I have tried it recently, and for so long it seems to me that I have not dwelt in my native region. The sun, the clouds, the snow, the trees say not so much

I do not know but it is too much to read one newspaper a week. I have tried it recently, and for so long it seems to me that I have not dwelt in my native region. The sun, the clouds, the snow, the trees say not so much to me. You cannot serve two masters.

Henry David Thoreau
Clouds, Two, Long
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.416, Simon and Schuster

I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper.

Henry David Thoreau
Memorable, News, Journalism
Henry David Thoreau (1882). “Walden”, p.148

My neighbors tell me of their adventures with famous gentlemen and ladies, what notabilities they met at the dinner-table; but I am no more interested in such things than in the contents of the Daily Times. The interest and the conversation are about costume and manners chiefly; but a goose is a goose still, dress it as you will.

Henry David Thoreau
Adventure, Gossip, Gentleman
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.333, Penguin

I lately met with an old volume from a London bookshop, containing the Greek Minor Poets, and it was a pleasure to read once moreonly the words Orpheus, Linus, Musæus,--those faint poetic sounds and echoes of a name, dying away on the ears of us modern men; and those hardly more substantial sounds, Mimnermus, Ibycus, Alcæus, Stesichorus, Menander. They lived not in vain. We can converse with these bodiless fames without reserve or personality.

Henry David Thoreau
Men, Echoes, Names
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.393, e-artnow

Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man?... We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old.

Henry David Thoreau
Men, May, Might
Henry David Thoreau (2004). “On Reading: From "Walden"”, p.5, Princeton University Press

It is worth the expense of youthful days and costly hours, if you learn only some words of an ancient language, which are raised out of the trivialness of the street, to be perpetual suggestions and provocations. It is not in vain that the farmer remembers and repeats the few Latin words which he has heard.

Henry David Thoreau
Latin, Suggestions, Language
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.68, Graphic Arts Books

Two thousand summers have imparted to the monuments of Grecian literature, as to her marbles, only a maturer golden and autumnal tint, for they have carried their own serene and celestial atmosphere into all lands to protect them against the corrosion of time.

Henry David Thoreau
Summer, Land, Two
Henry David Thoreau (2004). “On Reading: From "Walden"”, p.7, Princeton University Press

The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of what wisdom and valor and generosity we have. The modern cheap and fertile press, with all its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of antiquity. They seem as solitary, and the letter in which they are printed as rare and curious, as ever.

Henry David Thoreau
Mother, Book, Character
Henry David Thoreau (1939). “Walden: or, Life in the woods”

I hear many condemn these men because they were so few. When were the good and the brave ever in a majority? Would you have had him wait till that time came?--till you and I came over to him?

Henry David Thoreau
Men, Bravery, Waiting
"A Plea for Captain John Brown" (1859)

It is not so important that many should be good as you, as that there be some absolute goodness somewhere; for that will leaven the whole lump.

Henry David Thoreau
Progress, Important, Reform
Henry David Thoreau (1942). “Civil Disobedience”, p.6, Hayes Barton Press

Where there is not discernment, the behavior even of the purest soul may in effect amount to coarseness.

Henry David Thoreau
Soul, May, Morality
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.1138, Delphi Classics

In a thousand apparently humble ways men busy themselves to make some right take the place of some wrong,--if it is only to make abetter paste blacking,--and they are themselves so much the better morally for it.

Henry David Thoreau
Humble, Men, Progress
Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1865). “Letters to Various Persons”, p.100

If ever I did a man any goodof course it was something exceptional and insignificant compared with the good or evil which I am constantly doing by being what I am.

Henry David Thoreau
Men, Evil, Deeds

All fables, indeed, have their morals; but the innocent enjoy the story.

Henry David Thoreau
Stories, Fables, Innocence
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.3088, Delphi Classics

Good deeds are no less good because their object is unworthy.

Henry David Thoreau
Deeds, Morality, Objects
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Familiar Letters (Annotated Edition)”, p.137, Jazzybee Verlag

Whatever is, and is not ashamed to be, is good.

Henry David Thoreau
Morality, Ashamed, Good Moral
Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1865). “Letters to Various Persons”, p.194

It becomes the moralist, too, to inquire what man might do to improve and beautify the system; what to make the stars shine more brightly, the sun more cheery and joyous, the moon more placid and content.

Henry David Thoreau
Stars, Moon, Men
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.221, Simon and Schuster

It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar. Yet do this even till you can do better, and you may perhaps find some "Symmes' Hole" by which to get at the inside at last.

Henry David Thoreau
Cat, Zanzibar, World
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “Walden”, p.228, Xist Publishing

Man makes very much such a nest for his domestic animals, of withered grass and fodder, as the squirrels and many other wild creatures do for themselves.

Henry David Thoreau
Animal, Men, Squirrels
Henry David Thoreau (1873). “The Maine Woods”, p.129

Few, if any, creatures are equally active all night.

Henry David Thoreau
Night, Active, Creatures
Henry David Thoreau (1873). “The Maine Woods”, p.291

I like sometimes to take rank hold on life and spend my day more as the animals do. Perhaps I have owed to this employment and tohunting, when quite young, my closest acquaintance with Nature. They early introduce us to and detain us in scenery with which otherwise, at that age, we should have little acquaintance.

Henry David Thoreau
Hunting, Animal, Should Have
Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience: Top American Literary”, p.131, 谷月社

Some have asked if the stock of men could not be improved,--if they could not be bred as cattle. Let Love be purified, and all therest will follow. A pure love is thus, indeed, the panacea for all the ills of the world.

Henry David Thoreau
Love Is, Men, World
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Familiar Letters (Annotated Edition)”, p.165, Jazzybee Verlag

Men commonly couple with their idea of marriage a slight degree at least of sensuality; but every lover, the world over, believesin its inconceivable purity.

Henry David Thoreau
Marriage, Couple, Men
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.1759, Delphi Classics

They are not callow like the young of most birds, but more perfectly developed and precocious even than chickens. The remarkably adult yet innocent expression of their open and serene eyes is very memorable. All intelligence seems reflected in them. They suggest not merely the purity of infancy, but a wisdom clarified by experience. Such an eye was not born when the bird was, but is coeval with the sky it reflects. The woods do not yield another such a gem.

Henry David Thoreau
Eye, Memorable, Sky
Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Walden”, p.147, Cosimo, Inc.

I have no designs on society, or nature, or God. I am simply what I am, or I begin to be that. I live in the present. I only remember the past, and anticipate the future. I love to live.

Henry David Thoreau
Past, Design, Society
Henry David Thoreau, Barry Andrews (2005). “True Harvest: Readings from Henry David Thoreau for Every Day of the Year”, p.83, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations

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