"It is remarkable that among all the preachers there are so few moral teachers. The prophets are employed in excusing the ways of men."
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Quote collection
Henry David Thoreau quotes (page 116 of 139)
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"When you travel to the Celestial City, carry no letter of introduction. When you knock, ask to see God,--none of the servants."
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"I have heard of a minister, who had been a fisherman, being settled in Bridgewater for as long a time as he could tell a cod froma haddock. Generous as it seems, this condition would empty most country pulpits forthwith, for it is long since the fishers of men were fishermen."
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"I do not wish, it happens, to be associated with Massachusetts, either in holding slaves or in conquering Mexico. I am a little better than herself in these respects."
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"A fortified town is like a man cased in the heavy armor of antiquity, with a horse-load of broadswords and small arms slung to him, endeavoring to go about his business."
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"Of a life of luxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or commerce, or literature, or art."
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"We seem to think that the earth must go through the ordeal of sheep-pasturage before it is habitable by man."
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"The echo is, to some extent, an original sound, and therein is the magic and charm of it. It is not merely a repetition of what was worth repeating in the bell, but partly the voice of the wood; the same trivial words and notes sung by a wood-nymph."
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"I was awakened at midnight by some heavy, low-flying bird, probably a loon, flapping by close over my head, along the shore. So, turning the other side of my half-clad body to the fire, I sought slumber again."
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"In civilization, as in a southern latitude, man degenerates at length, and yields to the incursion of more northern tribes."
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"I will not allow mere names to make distinctions for me, but still see men in herds for all them."
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"In the planting of the seeds of most trees, the best gardeners do no more than follow Nature, though they may not know it."
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"Who knows what the human body would expand and flow out to under a more genial heaven?"
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"What is man but a mass of thawing clay?"
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"You must ascend a mountain to learn your relation to matter, and so to your own body, for it is at home there, though you are not."
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"There is not one kind of food for all men. You must and you will feed those faculties which you exercise. The laborer whose body is weary does not require the same food with the scholar whose brain is weary."
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"East of my bean-field, across the road, lived Cato Ingraham, slave of Duncan Ingraham, Esquire, gentleman, of Concord village, whobuilt his slave a house, and gave him permission to live in Walden Woods;MCato, not Uticensis, but Concordiensis. Some say that he was a Guinea Negro. There are a few who remember his little patch among the walnuts, which he let grow up till he should be old and need them; but a younger and whiter speculator got them at last. He too, however, occupies an equally narrow house at present."
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"I did not go to Boston, for with regard to that place I sympathize with one of my neighbors, an old man, who has not been there since the last war, when he was compelled to go. No, I have a real genius for staying at home."
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"Hence it will not do for the Landlord to possess too fine a nature.... He must have no idiosyncracies, no particular bents or tendencies to this or that, but a general, uniform, and healthy development, such as his portly person indicates, offering himself equally on all sides to men."
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"I want the flower and fruit of a man; that some fragrance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse."
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