"The next time the novelist rings the bell I will not stir though the meeting-house burn down."
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Henry David Thoreau quotes (page 125 of 139)
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"To meet the objections of some inveterate cavillers, I may as well state, that if I dined out occasionally, as I always had done,and I trust shall have opportunities to do again, it was frequently to the detriment of my domestic arrangements."
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"What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary?"
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"It is surprising how many great men and women a small house will contain. I have had twenty-five or thirty souls, with their bodies, at once under my roof, and yet we often parted without being aware that we had come very near to one another."
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"Individuals, like nations, must have suitable broad and natural boundaries, even a considerable neutral ground, between them."
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"But the eyes, though they are no sailors, will never be satisfied with any model, however fashionable, which does not answer all the requisitions of art."
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"In the wildest nature, there is not only the material of the most cultivated life, and a sort of anticipation of the last result,but a greater refinement already than is ever attained by man.... Nature is prepared to welcome into her scenery the finest work of human art, for she is herself an art so cunning that the artist never appears in his work."
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"Art may varnish and gild, but it can do no more."
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"Alas! the culture of an Irishman is an enterprise to be undertaken with a sort of moral bog hoe."
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"We shall be reduced to gnaw the very crust of the earth for nutriment."
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"I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me."
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"If you indulge in long periods, you must be sure to have a snapper at the end."
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"A good book is the plectrum with which our else silent lyres are struck."
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"Paper is cheap, and authors need not now erase one book before they write another. Instead of cultivating the earth for wheat andpotatoes, they cultivate literature, and fill a place in the Republic of Letters. Or they would fain write for fame merely, as others actually raise crops of grain to be distilled into brandy."
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"Surely the writer is to address a world of laborers, and such therefore must be his own discipline."
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"The child should have the advantage of ignorance as well as of knowledge, and is fortunate if he gets his share of neglect and exposure."
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"We bless and curse ourselves."
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"What avails it that another loves you, if he does not understand you? Such love is a curse."
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"There is a chasm between knowledge and ignorance which the arches of science can never span."
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"I do believe that the outward and the inward life correspond; that if any should succeed to live a higher life, others would not know of it; that difference and distance are one. To set about living a true life is to go on a journey to a distant country, gradually to find ourselves surrounded by new scenes and men; and as long as the old are around me, I know that I am not in any true sense living a new or a better life."
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