Thoreau Quotes...

from Henry David Thoreau (12 July 1817 – 6 May 1862), an American writer and philosopher:

"Talk of mysteries! — Think of our life in nature, — daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it, — rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks!
The solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact!
Who are we? where are we?"
The Maine Woods Ktaadn, Pt. 6 (1848)

"The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free."
Slavery In Massachuessetts

"It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?"
Letter to Harrison Blake (16 November 1857)

"Men and boys are learning all kinds of trades but how to make men of themselves.
They learn to make houses; but they are not so well housed, they are not so contented in their houses, as the woodchucks in their holes.
What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?
If you cannot tolerate the planet that it is on?
Grade the ground first. If a man believes and expects great things of himself, it makes no odds where you put him, or what you show him ... he will be surrounded by grandeur.
He is in the condition of a healthy and hungry man, who says to himself, — How sweet this crust is!"
Letter to Harrison Blake (20 May 1860); published in Familiar Letters (1865)

"Friends — They are like air bubbles on water, hastening to flow together. History tells of Orestes and Pylades, Damon and Pythias, but why should not we put to shame those old reserved worthies by a community of such?
Constantly, as it were through a remote skylight, I have glimpses of a serene friendship-land, and know the better why brooks murmur and violets grow.
This conjunction of souls, like waves which met and break, subsides also backward over things, and gives all a fresh aspect.
I would live henceforth with some gentle soul such a life as may be conceived, double for variety, single for harmony — two, only that we might admire at our oneness — one, because indivisible.
Such community to be a pledge of holy living.
How could aught unworthy be admitted into our society?
To listen with one ear to each summer sound, to behold with one eye each summer scene, our visual rays so to meet and mingle with the object as to be one bent and doubled; with two tongues to be wearied, and thought to spring ceaselessly from a double fountain."
January 26, 1840, From Journals (1838-1859)

"Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves."
1847, From Journals (1838-1859)

"Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk."
November 11, 1854, From Journals (1838-1859), Referring to an 1849 dairyman's strike, during which there was suspicion of milk being watered down.

"This bird sees the white man come and the Indian withdraw, but it withdraws not. Its untamed voice is still heard above the tinkling of the forge... It remains to remind us of aboriginal nature."
March 23, 1856, From Journals (1838-1859)

"If you are describing any occurrence... make two or more distinct reports at different times...
We discriminate at first only a few features, and we need to reconsider our experience from many points of view and in various moods in order to perceive the whole."
March 24, 1857, From Journals (1838-1859)

From Civil Disobedience (1849)

"If a thousand [citizens] were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood.
This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible."

"I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically.
Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe — "That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have."

"To speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government.
Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.
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.
Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience? — in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable?
Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator?
Why has every man a conscience, then?
I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.
It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.
The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.
It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience.
Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice."

"How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today?
I answered that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it."

"When a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country 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."

"He who gives himself entirely to his fellow-men appears to them useless and selfish; but he who gives himself partially to them is pronounced a benefactor and philanthropist."

"I am as desirous of being a good neighbor as I am of being a bad subject."

"No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America.
They are rare in the history of the world.
There are orators, politicians, and eloquent men, by the thousand; but the speaker has not yet opened his mouth to speak who is capable of settling the much-vexed questions of the day."

"A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the State with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated by it as enemies."

"Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government?
Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man?
There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.
I please myself with imagining a State at least which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men.
A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen."

from A Week on the Concord and Marrimack Rivers (1849)

"I trust that some may be as near and dear to Buddha, or Christ, or Swedenborg, who are without the pale of their churches.
It is necessary not to be Christian to appreciate the beauty and significance of the life of Christ.
I know that some will have hard thoughts of me, when they hear their Christ named beside my Buddha, yet I am sure that I am willing they should love their Christ more than my Buddha, for the love is the main thing, and I like him too."

"The wisest man preaches no doctrines; he has no scheme; he sees no rafter, not even a cobweb, against the heavens.
It is clear sky.
If I ever see more clearly at one time than at another, the medium through which I see is clearer."

"It would be a poor story to be prejudiced against the Life of Christ because the book has been edited by Christians."

"My life has been the poem I would have writ,

But I could not both live and utter it."

from Walden (1854)

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
What is called resignation is confirmed desperation."

"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve."

"Simplify, simplify."

"A living dog is better than a dead lion.
Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmy that he can?
Let every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made. Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises?
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."

"If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life."

"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours ...
In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness."

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary.
I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan- like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.
For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to "glorify God and enjoy him forever."

I just put these thoughts up because I felt like we often forget with whom we resonate from the past. The present, and our condition in it, tends to put blinders on us. If we do not learn from the past... well, y'all know how that ends!

"Simplify, Simplify!"

Peace,
Steve
eggonalimb.net