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How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?
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Henry David Thoreau |
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It is true, I never assisted the sun materially in his rising, but, doubt not, it was of the last importance only to be present at it.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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Undoubtedly the very tedium and ennui which presume to have exhausted the variety and the joys of life are as old as Adam.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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I never knew, and never shall know, a worse man than myself.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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As yesterday and the historical ages are past, as the work of today is present, so some flitting perspectives and demi-experiences of the life that is in nature are in time veritably future, or rather outside to time, perennial, young, divine, in the wind and rain which never die.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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16768f0
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When he read James Wilkinson's book The Human Body in 1851, Thoreau was impressed. "Wilkinson's book," he wrote in his journal, "to some extent realizes what I have dreamed of, -a return to the primitive analogical and derivative sense of words. His ability to trace analogies often leads to a truer word than more remarkable writers have found.... The faith he puts in old and current expressions as having sprung from an instinct wiser than s..
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Henry David Thoreau |
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a8954b5
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If it were worth the while to settle in those parts near to the Pleiades or the Hyades, to Aldebaran or Altair, then I was really there, or at an equal remoteness from the life which I had left behind, dwindled and twinkling with as fine a ray to my nearest neighbor, and to be seen only in moonless nights by him. Such was that part of creation where I had squatted;
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Henry David Thoreau |
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e35e13a
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Sure there are poets which did never dream Upon Parnassus, nor did taste the stream Of Helicon; we therefore may suppose Those made not poets, but the poets those.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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aec3b82
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There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. will then be the only slaves.
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slavery
politics
behavior
voting
justice
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Henry David Thoreau |
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68527c3
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Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be anything but a machine.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit--not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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38e8b31
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The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free.
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slavery
governments
law
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Henry David Thoreau |
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5ee0915
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In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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cc5d0e3
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The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles! What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment! Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?
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miracle
stars
empathy
life
walden-pond
walden
human-nature
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Henry David Thoreau |
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776d53b
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and instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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756c51f
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If a state is governed by the principles of reason, poverty and misery are subjects of shame; if a state is not governed by the principles of reason, riches and honors are subjects of shame." No:"
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Henry David Thoreau |
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70f782c
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This spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it
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Henry David Thoreau |
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But, wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society. It is true, I might have resisted forcibly with more or less effect, might have run "amok" against society; but I preferred that society should run "amok" against me, it being the desperate party."
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solitude
society
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Henry David Thoreau |
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8b4e550
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This people must cease to hold slaves, and to make war on Mexico, though it cost them their existence as a people.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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It is not all books that are as dull as their readers. There are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand, would be more salutary than the morning or the spring to our lives, and possibly put a new aspect on the face of things for us. How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, which will explain our miracles and reveal ..
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Henry David Thoreau |
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db6d506
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It is there that the fugitive slave, and the Mexican prisoner on parole, and the Indian come to plead the wrongs of his race should find them; on that separate but more free and honorable ground, where the State places those who are not with her, but against her--the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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8a4491b
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There are none happy in the world but beings who enjoy freely a vast horizon"--said Damodara,"
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Henry David Thoreau |
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One chair for solitude, two for friendship, and three for society.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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How can he remember well his ignorance--which his growth requires--who has so often to use his knowledge?
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Henry David Thoreau |
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that in their sacrifices to humanity they ran no risks, not even to their property; that after all they were not so noble but they treated the thief as he had treated them, and hoped, by a certain outward observance and a few prayers, and by walking in a particular straight though useless path from time to time, to save their souls. This may be to judge my neighbors harshly; for I believe that many of them are not aware that they have such ..
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Henry David Thoreau |
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As for clothing, [...] perhaps we are led oftener by the love of novelty, and a regard for the opinions of men, in procuring it, than by a true utility. [...] No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes; yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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4e1e5e3
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The sea-shore is a sort of neutral ground, a most advantageous point from which to contemplate this world.
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seashore
ocean
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Henry David Thoreau |
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d9dadff
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No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America. They are rare in the history of the world.
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history
politics
legislation
legislators
politicians
law
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Henry David Thoreau |
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0f663d1
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We go eastward to realize history, and study the works of art and literature, retracing the steps of the race; we go westward as into the future, with a spirit of enterprise and adventure. The Atlantic is a Lethan stream, in our passage over which we have had an opportunity to forget the Old World and its institutions.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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77aa610
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How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book!
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reading
life
new-era
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Henry David Thoreau |
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7b5df7e
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By all kinds of traps and sign-boards, threatening the extreme penalty of the divine law, exclude such trespassers from the only ground which can be sacred to you. It is so hard to forget what it is worse than useless to remember! If I am to be a thoroughfare, I prefer that it be of the mountain-brooks, the Parnassian streams, and not the town-sewers. There is inspiration, that gossip which comes to the ear of the attentive mind from the co..
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mind
thoughts
meaning
trivia
gossip
thinking
intellect
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Henry David Thoreau |
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a9a7efd
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Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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dc795f7
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It would be well, perhaps, if we were to spend more of our days and nights without any obstruction between us and the celestial bodies, if the poet did not speak so much from under a roof, or the saint dwell there so long. Birds do not sing in caves, nor do doves cherish their innocence in dovecots.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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17dc096
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Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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9e17fa7
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This American government--what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will. It is a sort of wooden gun to the people themselves. But it is not the less necessary for this; for the people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear..
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politics
henry-david-thoreau
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Henry David Thoreau |
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4d728e4
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We are wont to imagine rare and delectable places in some remote and more celestial corner of the system, behind the constellation of Cassiopeia's Chair, far from noise and disturbance. I discovered that my house actually had its site in such a withdrawn, but forever new and unprofaned, part of the universe.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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a38f350
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I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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c1f150e
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Every little pine needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and befriended me.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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ccffb9d
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I fear chiefly lest my expression may not be extra-vagant enough, may not wander far enough beyond the narrow limits of my daily experience, so as to be adequate to the truth of which I have been convinced.
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truth
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Henry David Thoreau |
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c38d41b
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what danger is there if you don't think of any?"),"
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Henry David Thoreau |
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0103be5
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De la literatura solo nos atrae lo salvaje. El aburrimiento no es sino otro nombre para lo domesticado.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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f96110a
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It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such. It is in the bog in our brains and bowels, the primitive vigour of Nature in us, that inspires that dream. I shall never find in the wilds of Labrador any greater wildness than in some recess of Concord, i.e. than I import into it.
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nature
willdness
landscape
wilderness
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Henry David Thoreau |