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Henry David Thoreau Quotes about Country

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Life consists with Wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him. One who pressed forward incessantly and never rested from his labors, who grew fast and made infinite

Life consists with Wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him. One who pressed forward incessantly and never rested from his labors, who grew fast and made infinite demands on life, would always find himself in a new country or wilderness, and surrounded by the raw material of life. He would be climbing over the prostrate stems of primitive forest trees.

Henry David Thoreau
Country, Men, Climbing
Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Walking: Top Essays”, p.11, 谷月社

In some countries a hunting parson is no uncommon sight. Such a one might make a good shepherd's dog, but is far from being the Good Shepherd.

Henry David Thoreau
Country, Dog, Hunting
Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Walden”, p.138, Cosimo, Inc.

I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks - who had the genius, so to speak, for sauntering: which word is beautifully derived "from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked for charity, under the pretense of going à la Sainte Terre," to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a Sainte-Terrer," a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander.

Henry David Thoreau
Country, Art, Children

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

Henry David Thoreau
Wisdom, Country, Men
'Walden' (1854) 'Economy'

Generally speaking, the political news, whether domestic or foreign, might be written today for the next ten years with sufficientaccuracy. Most revolutions in society have not power to interest, still less alarm us; but tell me that our rivers are drying up, or the genus pine dying out in the country, and I might attend.

Henry David Thoreau
Country, Years, Rivers
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.532, Simon and Schuster

Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them.

Henry David Thoreau
Country, Mistake, Ignorance
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.156, Penguin

As in many countries precious metals belong to the crown, so here more precious natural objects of rare beauty should belong to the public.

Henry David Thoreau
Country, Rare Beauty, Crowns
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.3047, Delphi Classics

The fate of the country does not depend on how you vote at the polls - the worst man is as strong as the best at that game; it does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning.

Henry David Thoreau
Country, Strong, Morning
Henry David Thoreau (2000). “Walden and Other Writings: (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.718, Modern Library

So is the English Parliament provincial. Mere country bumpkins, they betray themselves, when any more important question arises for them to settle, the Irish question, for instance,--the English question why did I not say? Their natures are subdued to what they work in. Their "good breeding" respects only secondary objects.

Henry David Thoreau
Country, Important, Settling
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.224, Graphic Arts Books

A man must generally get away some hundreds or thousands of miles from home before he can be said to begin his travels. Why not begin his travels at home? Would he have to go far or look very closely to discover novelties? The traveler who, in this sense, pursues his travels at home, has the advantage at any rate of a long residence in the country to make his observations correct and profitable. Now the American goes to England, while the Englishman comes to America, in order to describe the country.

Henry David Thoreau
Country, Travel, Home
Henry David Thoreau, Jeffrey S. Cramer (2007). “I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau”, p.86, Yale University Press

That devilish Iron Horse, whose ear-rending neigh is heard throughout the town, has muddied the Boiling Spring with his foot, and he it is that has browsed off all the woods on Walden shore, that Trojan horse, with a thousand men in his belly, introduced by mercenary Greeks! Where is the country's champion, the Moore of Moore Hall, to meet him at the Deep Cut and thrust an avenging lance between the ribs of the bloated pest?

Henry David Thoreau
Country, Horse, Spring
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “Walden”, p.139, Xist Publishing

I am a citizen of the world first, and of this country at a later and more convenient hour.

Henry David Thoreau
Country, Citizens, World

In respect to religion and the healing art, all nations are still in a state of barbarism. In the most civilized countries the priest is still but a Powwow, and the physician a Great Medicine.

Henry David Thoreau
Country, Art, Healing
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “A Week On The Concord And Merrimack Rivers (Annotated Edition)”, p.215, Jazzybee Verlag

What a battle a man must fight everywhere to maintain his standing army of thoughts, and march with them in orderly array throughthe always hostile country! How many enemies there are to sane thinking! Every soldier has succumbed to them before he enlists for those other battles.

Henry David Thoreau
Country, Army, Fighting
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.1381, e-artnow

I am not sure but I should betake myself in extremities to the liberal divinities of Greece, rather than to my country's God. Jehovah, though with us he has acquired new attributes, is more absolute and unapproachable, but hardly more divine, than Jove. He is not so much of a gentleman, not so gracious and catholic, he does not exert so intimate and genial an influence on nature, as many a god of the Greeks.

Henry David Thoreau
God, Country, Catholic
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.274, e-artnow

It seems to me that the god that is commonly worshipped in civilized countries is not at all divine, though he bears a divine name, but is the overwhelming authority and respectability of mankind combined. Men reverence one another, not yet God.

Henry David Thoreau
God, Country, Men
1849 A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers,'Sunday'.

I take it for granted, when I am invited to lecture anywhere,--for I have had a little experience in that business,--that there isa desire to hear what I think on some subject, though I may be the greatest fool in the country,--and not that I should say pleasant things merely, or such as an audience will assent to; and I resolve, accordingly, that I will give them a strong dose of myself. They have sent for me, and engaged to pay for me, and I am determined that they shall have me, though I bore them beyond all precedent.

Henry David Thoreau
Country, Strong, Thinking
Henry David Thoreau (2000). “Walden and Other Writings: (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.753, Modern Library

New York has her wilderness within her own borders; and though the sailors of Europe are familiar with the soundings of her Hudson, and Fulton long since invented the steamboat on its waters, an Indian is still necessary to guide her scientific men to its headwaters in the Adirondack country.

Henry David Thoreau
Country, New York, Native American
Henry David Thoreau (2002). “The Essays of Henry D. Thoreau: Selected and Edited by Lewis Hyde”, p.299, Macmillan

When a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country [Mexico] is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army.

Henry David Thoreau
Country, Military, Army

When I consider that the noble animals have been exterminated here - the cougar, panther, lynx, wolverine, wolf, bear, moose, deer, the beaver, the turkey, etc, etc - I cannot but feel as I lived in a tamed, and, as it were, emasculated country.

Henry David Thoreau
Funny, Country, Animal

While the very inhabitants of New England were thus fabling about the country a hundred miles inland, which was a terra incognitato them,... Champlain, the first Governor of Canada,... had already gone to war against the Iroquois in their forest forts, and penetrated to the Great Lakes and wintered there, before a Pilgrim had heard of New England.

Henry David Thoreau
Country, War, Lakes

The country is an archipelago of lakes,--the lake-country of New England.

Henry David Thoreau
Country, Lakes, England
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “The Maine Woods (Annotated Edition)”, p.30, Jazzybee Verlag

I do believe that the outward and the inward life correspond; that if any should succeed to live a higher life, others would not know of it; that difference and distance are one. To set about living a true life is to go on a journey to a distant country, gradually to find ourselves surrounded by new scenes and men; and as long as the old are around me, I know that I am not in any true sense living a new or a better life.

Henry David Thoreau
Life, Country, Travel
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.356, Penguin

Instead of the scream of a fish hawk scaring the fishes, is heard the whistle of the steam-engine, arousing a country to its progress.

Henry David Thoreau
Country, Fishing, Progress
Henry David Thoreau (2000). “Walden and Other Writings: (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.367, Modern Library

I am reminded by my journey how exceedingly new this country still is. You have only to travel for a few days into the interior and back parts even of many of the old States, to come to that very America which the Northmen, and Cabot, and Gosnold, and Smith, and Raleigh visited.

Henry David Thoreau
Country, Journey, America
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.560, Delphi Classics

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