Henry David Thoreau Quotes - Page 90

• True, there are architects so called in this country, and I have heard of one at least possessed with the idea of making architectural ornaments have a core of truth, a necessity, and hence a beauty, as if it were a revelation to him. All very well perhaps from his point of view, but only a little better than the common dilettantism.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Beauty, Country, Views

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.36, Graphic Arts Books

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• I fear chiefly lest my expression may not be extravagant enough, may not wander far enough beyond the narrow limit of my daily experience, so as to be adequate to the truth of which I have been convinced.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Truth, Fear, Expression

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.190, Graphic Arts Books

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• Where there is a lull in truth an institution springs up.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Truth, Spring, Institutions

  Henry David Thoreau (2006). “Thoreau and the Art of Life: Precepts and Principles”, p.23, Heron Dance Press

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• It is pleasant to have been to a place the way a river went.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Rivers, Environmental, Way

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.2215, Delphi Classics

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• The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this year higher than man has ever known it, and flood the parched uplands; even this may be the eventful year, which will drown out all our muskrats. It was not always dry land where we dwell. I see far inland the banks where the stream anciently washed, before science began to record its freshets.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Years, Land

  Henry David Thoreau (1995). “Walden: An Annotated Edition”, p.323, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The man of genius knows what he is aiming at; nobody else knows. And he alone knows when something comes between him and his object. In the course of generations, however, men will excuse you for not doing as they do, if you will bring enough to pass in your own way.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Excuse You, Generations

  Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.204, Courier Corporation

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• But why should not the New Englander try new adventures - not lay so much stress on his grain, his potato and grass crop, and his orchards - and raise other crops than these? Why concern ourselves so much about our beans for seed, and not be concerned at all about a new generation of men.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Stress, Adventure, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “The Illustrated Walden: Thoreau Bicentennial Edition”, p.171, Penguin

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• We do not associate the idea of antiquity with the ocean, nor wonder how it looked a thousand years ago, as we do of the land, for it was equally wild and unfathomable always.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Nature, Travel, Ocean

  Henry David Thoreau (1866). “Cape Cod”, p.174

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• This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting. A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Flower, Men, Bird

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “Walden; Or, Life in the Woods”, p.73, Courier Corporation

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• You can hardly convince a man of error in a life-time, but must content yourself with the reflection that the progress of science is slow. If he is not convinced, his grand-children may be. The geologists tell us that it took one hundred years to prove that fossils are organic, and one hundred and fifty more, to prove that they are not to be referred to the Noachian deluge.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Children, Science, Reflection

  Henry David Thoreau (2017). “Journeys, Adventures & Life in Harmony with Nature – 6 Book Collection (Illustrated): Including Walden, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, The Maine Woods, Cape Cod, A Yankee in Canada & Canoeing in the Wilderness - North American Highlands Series”, p.47, e-artnow

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• We have heard much about the poetry of mathematics, but very little of it has as yet been sung. The ancients had a juster notion of their poetic value than we. The most distinct and beautiful statements of any truth must take at last the mathematical form. We might so simplify the rules of moral philosophy, as well as of arithmetic, that one formula would express them both.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Beauty, Beautiful, Art

  Henry David Thoreau (1999). “Material Faith: Thoreau on Science”, p.12, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Those things for which the most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is an important item in the term bill, while for the far more valuable education which he gets by associating with the most cultivated of his contemporaries no charge is made.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Education, Important, Tuition

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.39, Graphic Arts Books

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• We saw one school-house in our walk, and listened to the sounds which issued from it; but it appeared like a place where the process, not of enlightening, but of obfuscating the mind was going on, and the pupils received only so much light as could penetrate the shadow of the Catholic church.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Education, School, Light

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Yankee in Canada”, p.35, Graphic Arts Books

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• Surely one may as profitably be soaked in the juices of a swamp for one day as pick his way dry-shod over sand. Cold and damp ? are they not as rich experience as warmth and dryness?

  Henry David Thoreau

  One Day, Experience, Juice

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.661, Simon and Schuster

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• I think that no experience which I have today comes up to, or is comparable with, the experiences of my boyhood.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Thinking, Experience, Today

  Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.47, Courier Corporation

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• It is hard to have a Southern overseer; it is worse to have a Northern one; but worst of all when you are yourself the slave-driver.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Freedom, Southern, Slave

  Henry David Thoreau (1882). “Walden”, p.14

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• Do we call this the land of the free? What is it to be free from King George the Fourth and continue the slaves of prejudice? What is it to be born free and equal, and not to live? What is the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom?

  Henry David Thoreau

  Kings, Freedom, Mean

  Henry David Thoreau, David Gross (2007). “The Price of Freedom: Political Philosophy from Thoreau's Journals”, p.50, David M Gross

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• What great interval is there between him who is caught in Africa and made a plantation slave of in the South, and him who is caught in New England and made a Unitarian minister of?

  Henry David Thoreau

  Freedom, England, Slave

  Henry David Thoreau (1906). “Journal: Aug. 16, 1856-Aug. 7, 1857”

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• I love my friends very much, but I find that it is of no use to go to see them. I hate them commonly when I am near them. They belie themselves and deny me continually.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Friendship, Hate, Use

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “Thoreau's Book of Quotations”, p.27, Courier Corporation

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• I have never met with a friend who furnished me sea-room. I have only tacked a few times and come to anchor - not sailed - made no voyage, carried no venture.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Friendship, Anchors, Sea

  Henry David Thoreau, Jeffrey S. Cramer (2007). “I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau”, p.163, Yale University Press

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• When I hear the hypercritical quarreling about grammar and style, the position of the particles, etc., etc., stretching or contracting every speaker to certain rules of theirs. I see that they forget that the first requisite and rule is that expression shall be vital and natural, as much as the voice of a brute or an interjection: first of all, mother tongue; and last of all, artificial or father tongue. Essentially your truest poetic sentence is as free and lawless as a lamb's bleat.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Mother, Father, Writing

  Henry David Thoreau (2006). “Thoreau and the Art of Life: Precepts and Principles”, p.13, Heron Dance Press

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• A man's ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beautiful-while his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless, besides being ugly.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Beautiful, Ignorance, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.361, Simon and Schuster

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• Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.
  Aim above morality.
  Be not simply good;
  be good for something.
  All fables, indeed, have their morals; but the innocent enjoy the story. Let nothing come between you and the light. Respect men and brothers only. When you travel to the Celestial City, carry no letter of introduction. When you knock, ask to see God

  Henry David Thoreau

  Brother, Men, Light

  Henry David Thoreau (1894). “The Writings of Henry David Thoreau”

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• It is interesting to observe with what singular unanimity the farthest sundered nations and generations consent to give completeness and roundness to an ancient fable, of which they indistinctly appreciate the beauty or the truth. By a faint and dream-like effort, though it be only by the vote of a scientific body, the dullest posterity slowly add some trait to the mythus. As when astronomers call the lately discovered planet Neptune; or the asteroid Astr

  Henry David Thoreau

  Dream, Appreciate, Giving

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.482, Simon and Schuster

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• The ocean is a wilderness reaching round the globe, wilder than a Bengal jungle, and fuller of monsters, washing the very wharves of our cities and the gardens of our sea-side residences.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Ocean, Garden, Sea

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.826, Delphi Classics

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