Henry David Thoreau Quotes - Page 70

• Philosophy, certainly, is some account of truths the fragments and very insignificant parts of which man will practice in this workshop; truths infinite and in harmony with infinity, in respect to which the very objects and ends of the so-called practical philosopher will be mere propositions, like the rest.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.281, Simon and Schuster

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• Beside some philosophers of larger vision, Carlyle stands like an honest, half-despairing boy, grasping at some details only of their world systems.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Philosophical, Boys, Vision

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.281, Simon and Schuster

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• The philosopher's conception of things will, above all, be truer than other men's, and his philosophy will subordinate all the circumstances of life. To live like a philosopher is to live, not foolishly, like other men, but wisely and according to universal laws.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Selected Essays of Henry David Thoreau”, p.93, Simon and Schuster

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• Philosophy, having crept clinging to the rocks so far, puts out its feelers many ways in vain.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Rocks

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.1087, Delphi Classics

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• The scholar may be sure that he writes the tougher truth for the calluses on his palms. They give firmness to the sentence. Indeed, the mind never makes a great and successful effort, without a corresponding energy of the body.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Writing, Successful, Giving

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

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• Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towardsrecognizing and organizing the rights of man?

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Rights, Democracy

  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

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• Doubtless, we are as slow to conceive of Paradise as of Heaven, of a perfect natural as of a perfect spiritual world. We see how past ages have loitered and erred. "Is perhaps our generation free from irrationality and error? Have we perhaps reached now the summit of human wisdom, and need no more to look out for mental or physical improvement?" Undoubtedly, we are never so visionary as to be prepared for what the next hour may bring forth.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Spiritual, Past, Errors

  Henry David Thoreau (2002). “The Essays of Henry D. Thoreau: Selected and Edited by Lewis Hyde”, p.122, North Point Press

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• The improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man's existence: as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Skeletons, Law

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.10, Simon and Schuster

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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 population.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Eye, Pigs, Cities

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

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• 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

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• 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

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• A man might well pray that he may not taboo or curse any portion of nature by being buried in it.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, May, Might

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.120, Xist Publishing

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• For the most part, the best man's spirit makes a fearful sprite to haunt his grave.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Spirit, Graves

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.999, Delphi Classics

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• The condition-of-England question is a practical one. The condition of England demands a hero, not a poet.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Hero, Demand, England

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.277, Simon and Schuster

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• I do not believe there are eight hundred human beings on the globe.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Believe, Eight, Human Nature

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.1671, Delphi Classics

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• For the most part, we are not where we are, but in a false position. Through an infirmity of our natures, we suppose a case, and put ourselves into it, and hence are in two cases at the same time, and it is doubly difficult to get out.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Two, Human Nature, Cases

  Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Walden”, p.212, Cosimo, Inc.

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• The moles nested in my cellar, nibbling every third potato, and making a snug bed even there of some hair left after plastering and of brown paper; for even the wildest animals love comfort and warmth as well as man, and they survive the winter only because they are so careful to secure them.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Winter, Animal, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.152, Graphic Arts Books

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• Men are in the main alike, but they were made several in order that they might be various. If a low use is to be served, one man will do nearly quite as well as another; if a high one, individual excellence is to be regarded.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Order, Excellence

  Henry David Thoreau (1993). “Civil Disobedience, and Other Essays”, p.67, Courier Corporation

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• The only government that I recognize--and it matters not how few are at the head of it, or how small its army--is that power thatestablishes justice in the land, never that which establishes injustice.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Army, Government, Land

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.249, Graphic Arts Books

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• After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Hands, Majority Rule

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.286, Simon and Schuster

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• If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Justice, Drowning

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.288, Simon and Schuster

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• The lover wants no partiality. He says, Be so kind as to be just.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Justice, Want, Lovers

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.1139, Delphi Classics

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• It behooves every man to see that his influence is on the side of justice, and let the courts make their own characters.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Character, Men, Law

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.311, Simon and Schuster

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• While the Governor, and the Mayor, and countless officers of the Commonwealth are at large, the champions of liberty are imprisoned.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Government, Justice, Champion

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “Civil Disobedience and Other Essays”, p.28, Courier Corporation

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• I wish my countrymen to consider that whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can ever commit the leastact of injustice against the obscurest individual without having to pay the penalty for it. A government which deliberately enacts injustice, and persists in it, will at length even become the laughing-stock of the world.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Government, Law, Justice

  Henry David Thoreau, Nancy L. Rosenblum (1996). “Thoreau: Political Writings”, p.127, Cambridge University Press

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