Thoreau's Book of Quotations
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About this ebook
To Emerson and other New England transcendentalists who knew him best, Thoreau often seemed prickly and antisocial. But in his writings he was (and is) a man anyone would treasure as a friend, sounding board, and spiritual advisor — a man who trafficked in that rarest of commodities, the truth. Even now, almost 140 years after his death, his voice remains clear and compelling, and his truths are as relevant and meaningful as they were in his lifetime.
In this treasury of more than 450 striking, thought-provoking excerpts from his writing, you will hear him railing against injustice, giving voice to his love of nature, and advocating the simplicity and conscious living that he brought to fruition during his two-year stay at Walden Pond. "To be serene and successful we must be at one with the universe." "Our life is frittered away by detail…. Simplify, simplify."
Grouped under 17 headings, including "Education," "Freedom and Individualism," "Friendship and Love," "Human Nature," "Literature and Writing," "Nature," "Season," and "Solitude," the quotations include such favorites as "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation" and "Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk." Whatever category they are in, Thoreau's observations provide so much inspiration and intellectual nourishment that browsing through this book becomes an exciting voyage of discovery into the heart of the human condition.
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was an American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher. He is best known for his book Walden and his essay "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" (originally published as "Resistance to Civil Government"). Thoreau was a lifelong abolitionist, delivering lectures that attacked the fugitive slave law while praising the writings of Wendell Phillips and defending the abolitionist John Brown. Thoreau's philosophy of civil disobedience later influenced the political thoughts and actions of such notable figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. His writings on natural history and philosophy anticipated modern-day environmentalism.
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Thoreau's Book of Quotations - Henry David Thoreau
CONTEMPLATION AND REFLECTION
He is the rich man, and enjoys the fruits of riches, who summer and winter forever can find delight in his own thoughts.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
e9780486159317_i0003.jpgIn all perception of the truth there is a divine ecstasy, an inexpressible delirium of joy, as when a youth embraces his betrothed virgin.
Familiar Letters
e9780486159317_i0004.jpgNew ideas come into this world somewhat like falling meteors, with a flash and an explosion, and perhaps somebody’s castle-roof perforated.
Familiar Letters
e9780486159317_i0005.jpgGenius is a light which makes darkness visible, like the lightning’s flash, which perchance shatters the temple of knowledge itself,—and not a taper lighted at the hearth-stone of the race, which pales before the light of common day.
Walking
Truth strikes us from behind, and in the dark, as well as from before and in broad daylight.
Journal
e9780486159317_i0007.jpgEver and anon something will occur which my philosophy has not dreamed of. The limits of the actual are set some thoughts further off. That which had seemed a rigid wall of vast thickness unexpectedly proves a thin and undulating drapery.
Journal
e9780486159317_i0008.jpgObjects are concealed from our view, not so much because they are out of the course of our visual ray as because we do not bring our minds and eyes to bear on them, for there is no power to see in the eye itself, any more than in any other jelly.
Autumnal Tints
What shall we make of the fact that you have only to stand on your head a moment to be enchanted with the beauty of the landscape?
Journal
e9780486159317_i0009.jpgIt is only necessary to behold thus the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair’s breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance.
Journal
e9780486159317_i0010.jpgI am, perchance, most and most profitably interested in the things which I already know a little about; a mere and utter novelty is a mere monstrosity to me.
Journal
e9780486159317_i0011.jpgWe cannot see anything until we are possessed with the idea of it, take it into our heads,—and then we can hardly see anything else.
Autumnal Tints
Whether he sleeps or wakes,—whether he runs or walks,—whether he uses a microscope or a telescope, or his naked eye,—a man never discovers anything, never overtakes anything, or leaves anything behind, but himself.
Familiar Letters
e9780486159317_i0013.jpgThis world is but canvass to our imaginations.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
e9780486159317_i0014.jpgThe landscape lies far and fair within, and the deepest thinker is the farthest traveled.
A Walk to Wachusett
As Bonaparte sent out his horsemen in the Red Sea on all sides to find shallow water, so I sent forth my mounted thoughts to find deep water.
Familiar Letters
e9780486159317_i0016.jpgAny sincere thought is irresistible.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
e9780486159317_i0017.jpgIf I am visited by a thought, I chew that cud each successive morning, as long as there is any flavor in it.
Journal
Our genius is like a brush which only once in many months is freshly dipped into the paint-pot. It becomes so dry that though we apply it incessantly, it fails to tinge the earth and sky. Applied to the same spot incessantly, it at length imparts no color to it.
Journal
e9780486159317_i0018.jpgIt is a far more difficult feat to get up without spilling your morning thought, than that which is often practiced of taking a cup of water from behind your head as you lie on your back and drinking from it.
Journal
e9780486159317_i0019.jpgWhen my thoughts are sensible of change, I love to see and sit on rocks which I have known, and pry into their moss, and see unchangeableness so