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Henry David Thoreau Quotes - Page 95

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I don't like the city better, the more I see it, but worse. I am ashamed of my eyes that behold it. It is a thousand times meanerthan I could have imagined.... The pigs in the street are the most respectable part of the

I don't like the city better, the more I see it, but worse. I am ashamed of my eyes that behold it. It is a thousand times meanerthan I could have imagined.... The pigs in the street are the most respectable part of the population.

Henry David Thoreau
Eye, Pigs, Cities
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Familiar Letters (Annotated Edition)”, p.68, Jazzybee Verlag

But it is rather derogatory that your dwelling-place should be only a neighborhood to a great city,--to live on an inclined plane.I do not like their cities and forts, with their morning and evening guns, and sails flapping in one's eye. I want a whole continent to breathe in, and a good deal of solitude and silence, such as all Wall Street cannot buy,--nor Broadway with its wooden pavement. I must live along the beach, on the southern shore, which looks directly out to sea,--and see what that great parade of water means, that dashes and roars, and has not yet wet me, as long as I have lived.

Henry David Thoreau
Beach, Morning, Wall
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Familiar Letters (Annotated Edition)”, p.59, Jazzybee Verlag

You must not count much upon what I can do or learn in New York.... Everything there disappoints me but the crowd; rather, I was disappointed with the rest before I came. I have no eyes for their churches, and what else they find to brag of. Though I know but little about Boston, yet what attracts me, in a quiet way, seems much meaner and more pretending than there,--libraries, pictures, and faces in the street. You don't know where any respectability inhabits.

Henry David Thoreau
New York, Eye, Boston
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.1231, e-artnow

There is considerable danger that a man will be crazy between dinner and supper; but it will not directly answer any good purposethat I know of, and it is just as easy to be sane.

Henry David Thoreau
Crazy, Men, Insanity
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Familiar Letters (Annotated Edition)”, p.190, Jazzybee Verlag

The tops of mountains are among the unfinished parts of the globe, whither it is a slight insult to the gods to climb and pry intotheir secrets, and try their effect on our humanity. Only daring and insolent men, perchance, go there. Simple races, as savages, do not climb mountains,--their tops are sacred and mysterious tracts never visited by them. Pomola is always angry with those who climb the summit of Ktaadn.

Henry David Thoreau
Pride, Simple, Men
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.558, e-artnow

As for your high towers and monuments, there was a crazy fellow once in this town who undertook to dig through to China, and he got so far that, as he said, he heard the Chinese pots and kettles rattle; but I think that I shall not go out of my way to admire the hole which he made.

Henry David Thoreau
Crazy, Pride, Thinking
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.37, Simon and Schuster

As I walked in the woods to see the birds and squirrels, so I walked in the village to see the men and boys; instead of the wind among the pines I heard the carts rattle. In one direction from my house there was a colony of muskrats in the river meadows; under the grove of elms and buttonwoods in the other horizon was a village of busy men, as curious to me as if they had been prarie-dogs, each sitting at the mouth of its burrow, or running over to a neighbor's to gossip. I went there frequently to observe their habits.

Henry David Thoreau
Running, Dog, Men
Henry David Thoreau (2017). “Walden: Life in the Woods”, p.105, Gibbs Smith

In Canada an ordinary New England house would be mistaken for the château, and while every village here contains at least severalgentlemen or "squires," there is but one to a seigniory.

Henry David Thoreau
Class, House, Ordinary
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.922, Delphi Classics

Most men would feel shame if caught preparing with their own hands precisely such a dinner, whether of animal or vegetable food, as is every day prepared for them by others. Yet till this is otherwise we are not civilized, and, if gentlemen and ladies, are not true men and women. This certainly suggests what change is to be made.

Henry David Thoreau
Animal, Men, Hands
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 inhabitants of Canada appeared to be suffering between two fires,--the soldiery and the priesthood.

Henry David Thoreau
Fire, Two, Suffering
Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “A Yankee in Canada: With Anti-slavery and Reform Papers”, p.78

A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart.

Henry David Thoreau
War, Heart, Order
Henry David Thoreau (2002). “The Essays of Henry D. Thoreau: Selected and Edited by Lewis Hyde”, p.202, North Point Press

Don't spend your time in drilling soldiers, who may turn out hirelings after all, but give to undrilled peasantry a country to fight for.

Henry David Thoreau
Country, Fighting, Giving
Letter to Harrison Blake, 26 Sept. 1855

Concord River is remarkable for the gentleness of its current, which is scarcely perceptible, and some have referred to its influence the proverbial moderation of the inhabitants of Concord, as exhibited in the Revolution, and on later occasions.

Henry David Thoreau
Peace, Rivers, Revolution
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.8, Xist Publishing

The monster is never just there where we think he is. What is truly monstrous is our cowardice and sloth.

Henry David Thoreau
Thinking, Sloth, Monsters
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.1786, Delphi Classics

Cowards suffer, heroes enjoy.

Henry David Thoreau
Hero, Joy, Suffering
Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1865). “Letters to Various Persons”, p.184

Be assured that every man's success is in proportion to his average ability. The meadow flowers spring and bloom where the watersannually deposit their slime, not where they reach in some freshet only. A man is not his hope, nor his despair, nor yet his past deed. We know not yet what we have done, still less what we are doing. Wait till evening, and other parts of our day's work will shine than we had thought at noon, and we shall discover the real purport of our toil. As when the farmer has reached the end of the furrow and looks back, he can tell best where the pressed earth shines most.

Henry David Thoreau
Success, Patience, Spring
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “A Week On The Concord And Merrimack Rivers (Annotated Edition)”, p.106, Jazzybee Verlag

Yet we must try the harder, the less the prospect of success.

Henry David Thoreau
Success, Trying, Harder
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “The Maine Woods: The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, Volume III (of 20)”, p.154, Trajectory Inc

It is one of the signs of the times. We confess that we have risen from reading this book with enlarged ideas, and grander conceptions of our duties in this world. It did expand us a little.

Henry David Thoreau
Book, Reading, Ideas
Henry David Thoreau (2002). “The Essays of Henry D. Thoreau: Selected and Edited by Lewis Hyde”, p.107, North Point Press

You ask if there is no doctrine of sorrow in my philosophy. Of acute sorrow I suppose that I know comparatively little. My saddestand most genuine sorrows are apt to be but transient regrets. The place of sorrow is supplied, perchance, by a certain hard and proportionately barren indifference. I am of kin to the sod, and partake of its dull patience,--in winter expecting the sun of spring.

Henry David Thoreau
Patience, Regret, Philosophy
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.359, Penguin

It is necessary not to be Christian to appreciate the beauty and significance of the life of Christ.

Henry David Thoreau
Christian, Jesus, Appreciate
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.47, Xist Publishing

Christ is the prince of Reformers and Radicals.

Henry David Thoreau
Jesus, Radicalism, Christ
Henry David Thoreau (1873). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.146

The New Testament is an invaluable book, though I confess to having been slightly prejudiced against it in my very early days by the church and the Sabbath school, so that it seemed, before I read it, to be the yellowest book in the catalogue. Yet I early escaped from their meshes. It was hard to get the commentaries out of one's head and taste its true flavor. [...] It would be a poor story to be prejudiced against the Life of Christ because the book has been edited by Christians.

Henry David Thoreau
Bible, Christian, Dream
"A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers". Book by Henry David Thoreau, 1849.

Our own country furnishes antiquities as ancient and durable, and as useful, as any; rocks at least as well covered with lichens,and a soil which, if it is virgin, is but virgin mould, the very dust of nature. What if we cannot read Rome or Greece, Etruria or Carthage, or Egypt or Babylon, on these; are our cliffs bare?

Henry David Thoreau
Country, America, Rocks
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.193, Delphi Classics

An Englishman, methinks,--not to speak of other European nations,--habitually regards himself merely as a constituent part of theEnglish nation; he is a member of the royal regiment of Englishmen, and is proud of his company, as he has reason to be proud of it. But an American--one who has made tolerable use of his opportunities--cares, comparatively, little about such things, and is advantageously nearer to the primitive and the ultimate condition of man in these respects.

Henry David Thoreau
Men, Opportunity, Royal
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.915, Delphi Classics

The English did not come to America from a mere love of adventure, nor to truck with or convert the savages, nor to hold offices under the crown, as the French to a great extent did, but to live in earnest and with freedom.

Henry David Thoreau
Freedom, Adventure, America
Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “A Yankee in Canada: With Anti-slavery and Reform Papers”, p.62

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