Margret Fuller

Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli (23 May 1810 -19 June 1850) was an American author, journalist, critic and women's rights activist. She, her husband, and their child all died at the end of a five week voyage from Europe in a shipwreck just off of Fire Island.

Contents [hide] 1 Sourced 1.1 Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 (1844) 1.2 Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845) 1.3 Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1852) 1.4 At Home And Abroad (1856) 1.5 Life Without and Life Within (1859) 1.5.1 Freedom and Truth 1.5.2 Sub Rosa, Crux 1.5.3 Flaxman 1.5.4 My Seal-Ring 1.5.5 The Captured Wild Horse 1.5.6 The Thankful and the Thankless 1.5.7 Prophecy and Fulfilment 1.5.8 The One In All 1.5.9 A Greeting 1.5.10 Sistrum 1.6 Dryad Song (1900) 1.7 The Love Letters Of Margaret Fuller (1903) 2 Unsourced 3 Misattributed 4 Quotes about Fuller 5 External links

[edit] Sourced

Might the simple maxim, that honesty is the best policy be laid to heart!

• There are noble books but one wants the breath of life sometimes. And I see no divine person. I myself am more divine than any I see — I think that is enough to say about them...
  • Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson (1 March 1838); published in The Letters of Margaret Fuller vol. I, p. 327, , edited by Robert N. Hudspeth (1983).

• Beware of over-great pleasure in being popular or even beloved.
  • Letter to her brother, (20 December 1840) as quoted in The Feminist Papers (1973) by Alice Rossi.

• Put up at the moment of greatest suffering a prayer, not for thy own escape, but for the enfranchisement of some being dear to thee, and the sovereign spirit will accept thy ransom.
  • "Recipe to prevent the cold of January from utterly destroying life" (30 January 1841), quoted in Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1898) by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, p. 97

• Men disappoint me so, I disappoint myself so, yet courage, patience, shuffle the cards ...
  • Letter to Reverend William Henry Channing (21 February 1841) quoted in Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1898) by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, p. 112

• It is astonishing what force, purity, and wisdom it requires for a human being to keep clear of falsehoods.
  • Notes from Cambridge, Massachusetts (July 1842) published in Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1852), Vol. II, p. 64

• How many persons must there be who cannot worship alone since they are content with so little.
  • Letter to Rev. W. H. Channing (31 December 1843) quoted in Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1898) by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, p. 184

• Might the simple maxim, that honesty is the best policy be laid to heart! Might a sense of the true aims of life elevate the tone of politics and trade, till public and private honor become identical!
  • Summer On The Lakes, in 1843 (1844)

• Let no one dare to call another mad who is not himself willing to rank in the same class for every perversion and fault of judgment. Let no one dare aid in punishing another as criminal who is not willing to suffer the penalty due to his own offenses.
  • Article, The New York Daily Tribune (22 February 1845), p. 19; quoted in Brilliant Bylines (1986) by Barbara Belford

• Were the destiny of woman thus exactly marked out, did she invariably retain the shelter of a parent’s or guardian’s roof till she married, did marriage give her a sure home and a protector, were she never liable to be made a widow, or, if so, sure of finding immediate protection from a brother or new husband, so that she might never be forced to stand alone one moment, and were her mind given for this world only, with no faculties capable of eternal growth and infinite improvement, we would still demand of her a far wider and more generous culture than is proposed by those who so anxiously define her sphere.
  • Article, The New York Daily Tribune (30 September 1845); quoted in Brilliant Bylines (1986) by Barbara Belford

• The use of criticism, in periodical writing, is to sift, not to stamp a work.
  • "A Short Essay on Critics" in Papers on Literature and Art (1846), p. 5

• Genius will live and thrive without training, but it does not the less reward the watering-pot and pruning-knife.
  • "Life of Sir James Mackintosh" in Papers on Literature and Art (1846), p. 50

• Very early, I knew that the only object in life was to grow.
  • Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1852), Vol. I, p. 132

• It does not follow because many books are written by persons born in America that there exists an American literature. Books which imitate or represent the thoughts and life of Europe do not constitute an American literature. Before such can exist, an original idea must animate this nation and fresh currents of life must call into life fresh thoughts along its shores.
  • "American Literature" in Papers on Literature and Art (1846), p. 122

• Essays, entitled critical, are epistles addressed to the public, through which the mind of the recluse relieves itself of its impressions.
  • "A Short Essay on Critics" in Art, Literature and the Drama (1858).

There is a beauty in natural form, if its law and purpose be understood.

• There are two modes of criticism. One which ... crushes to earth without mercy all the humble buds of Phantasy, all the plants that, though green and fruitful, are also a prey to insects or have suffered by drouth. It weeds well the garden, and cannot believe the weed in its native soil may be a pretty, graceful plant.
  There is another mode which enters into the natural history of every thing that breathes and lives, which believes no impulse to be entirely in vain, which scrutinizes circumstances, motive and object before it condemns, and believes there is a beauty in natural form, if its law and purpose be understood.
  • "Poets of the People" in Art, Literature and the Drama (1858).

• It is not because the touch of genius has roused genius to production, but because the admiration of genius has made talent ambitious, that the harvest is still so abundant.
  • "The Modern Drama" in Art, Literature and the Drama (1858).

• We doubt not the destiny of our country — that she is to accomplish great things for human nature, and be the mother of a nobler race than the world has yet known. But she has been so false to the scheme made out at her nativity, that it is now hard to say which way that destiny points.
  • "American Facts" in Life Without and Life Within (1860) edited by Arthur Buckminster Fuller, p. 108

• Genius will live and thrive without training, but it does not the less reward the watering-pot and pruning-knife.
  • As quoted in Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1898) by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, p. 289

• For precocity some great price is always demanded sooner or later in life.
  • As quoted in Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1898) by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, p. 289

• Man tells his aspiration in his God; but in his demon he shows his depth of experience; and casts light into the cavern through which he worked his cause up to the cheerful day.
  • As quoted in Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1898) by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, p. 289-91

• I accept the universe.
  • As quoted in The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) by William James

• I now know all the people worth knowing in America, and I find no intellect comparable to my own.
  • As reported by Ralph Waldo Emerson in Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1884) Vol. 1, Pt. 4.
  • Of this comment Perry Miller states "the fact is that at Emerson's table she was speaking the truth." "I find no intellect comparable to my own" in American Heritage magazine, Vol. 8, Issue 2 (February 1957)

• I am 'too fiery' … yet I wish to be seen as I am, and would lose all rather than soften away anything.
  • As quoted by Joseph Jay Deiss in "Humanity, said Edgar Allan Poe, is divided into Men, Women, and Margaret Fuller" in American Heritage magazine, Vol. 23, Issue 5 (August 1972)

• Your prudence, my wise friend, allows too little room for the mysterious whisperings of life.
  • To Ralph Waldo Emerson, as quoted in "Humanity, said Edgar Allan Poe, is divided into Men, Women, and Margaret Fuller" Joseph Jay Deiss in American Heritage magazine, Vol. 23, Issue 5 (August 1972)

• You are intellect, I am life!
  • To Ralph Waldo Emerson, as quoted in "Humanity, said Edgar Allan Poe, is divided into Men, Women, and Margaret Fuller" Joseph Jay Deiss in American Heritage magazine, Vol. 23, Issue 5 (August 1972)

[edit] Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 (1844)

• To one who has enjoyed the full life of any scene, of any hour, what thoughts can be recorded about it, seem like the commas and semicolons in the paragraph, mere stops.
  • p. 10

• All around us lies what we neither understand nor use. Our capacities, our instincts for this our present sphere are but half developed. Let us confine ourselves to that till the lesson be learned; let us be completely natural; before we trouble ourselves with the supernatural. I never see any of these things but I long to get away and lie under a green tree and let the wind blow on me. There is marvel and charm enough in that for me.
  • "Good Sense" in a dialogue between Free Hope, Old Church, Good Sense, and Self -Poise. p. 127

• Who sees the meaning of the flower uprooted in the ploughed field? The ploughman who does not look beyond its boundaries and does not raise his eyes from the ground ? No — but the poet who sees that field in its relations with the universe, and looks oftener to the sky than on the ground. Only the dreamer shall understand realities, though, in truth, his dreaming must not be out of proportion to his waking!
  • "Free Hope" p. 127

• I never lived, that I remember, what you call a common natural day. All my days are touched by the supernatural, for I feel the pressure of hidden causes, and the presence, sometimes the communion, of unseen powers. It needs not that I should ask the clairvoyant whether "a spirit-world projects into ours." As to the specific evidence, I would not tarnish my mind by hasty reception. The mind is not, I know, a highway, but a temple, and its doors should not be carelessly left open. Yet it were sin, if indolence or coldness excluded what had a claim to enter ; and I doubt whether, in the eyes of pure intelligence, an ill-grounded hasty rejection be not a greater sign of weakness than an ill-grounded and hasty faith.
  • "Free Hope" p. 128

• The better part of wisdom is a sublime prudence, a pure and patient truth that will receive nothing it is not sure it can permanently lay to heart. Of our study there should be in proportion two-thirds of rejection to one of acceptance. And, amid the manifold infatuations and illusions of this world of emotion, a being capable of clear intelligence can do no better service than to hold himself upright, avoid nonsense, and do what chores lie in his way, acknowledging every moment that primal truth, which no fact exhibits, nor, if pressed by too warm a hope, will even indicate. I think, indeed, it is part of our lesson to give a formal consent to what is farcical, and to pick up our living and our virtue amid what is so ridiculous, hardly deigning a smile, and certainly not vexed. The work is done through all, if not by every one.
  • "Self-Poise" p. 130

• Thou art greatly wise, my friend, and ever respected by me, yet I find not in your theory or your scope, room enough for the lyric inspirations, or the mysterious whispers of life. To me it seems that it is madder never to abandon oneself, than often to be infatuated; better to be wounded, a captive, and a slave, than always to walk in armor.
  • "Free Hope" p. 131

[edit] Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845)

Full text online - This work was based on her earlier essay "The Great Lawsuit — Man versus Men: Woman versus Women" in The Dial IV, (July 1843)

Those who seem overladen with electricity frighten those around them.

• There exists in the minds of men a tone of feeling toward women as toward slaves.

• We would have every arbitrary barrier thrown down. We would have every path laid open to Woman as freely as to Man. Were this done, and a slight temporary fermentation allowed to subside, we should see crystallizations more pure and of more various beauty. We believe the divine energy would pervade nature to a degree unknown in the history of former ages, and that no discordant collision, but a ravishing harmony of the spheres, would ensue.
  Yet, then and only then will mankind be ripe for this, when inward and outward freedom for Woman as much as for Man shall be acknowledged as a right, not yielded as a concession.

• Let it not be said, wherever there is energy or creative genius, 'She has a masculine mind.'
  This by no means argues a willing want of generosity toward Woman. Man is as generous towards her as he knows how to be. Wherever she has herself arisen in national or private history, and nobly shone forth in any form of excellence, men have received her, not only willingly, but with triumph.

When the intellect and affections are in harmony; when intellectual consciousness is calm and deep; inspiration will not be confounded with fancy.

• The electrical, the magnetic element in Woman has not been fairly brought out at any period. Everything might be expected from it; she has far more of it than Man. This is commonly expressed by saying that her intuitions are more rapid and more correct. You will often see men of high intellect absolutely stupid in regard to the atmospheric changes, the fine invisible links which connect the forms of life around them, while common women, if pure and modest, so that a vulgar self do not overshadow the mental eye, will seize and delineate these with unerring discrimination.
  Women who combine this organization with creative genius are very commonly unhappy at present. They see too much to act in conformity with those around them, and their quick impulses seem folly to those who do not discern the motives. This is an usual effect of the apparition of genius, whether in Man or Woman, but is more frequent with regard to the latter, because a harmony, an obvious order and self-restraining decorum, is most expected from her.
  Then women of genius, even more than men, are likely to be enslaved by an impassioned sensibility. The world repels them more rudely, and they are of weaker bodily frame.
  Those who seem overladen with electricity frighten those around them.

• The especial genius of Woman I believe to be electrical in movement, intuitive in function, spiritual in tendency.

• It is with just that hope that we welcome everything that tends to strengthen the fibre and develop the nature on more sides. When the intellect and affections are in harmony; when intellectual consciousness is calm and deep; inspiration will not be confounded with fancy.

Let us be wise, and not impede the soul.

• Male and female represent the two sides of the great radical dualism. But, in fact, they are perpetually passing into one another. Fluid hardens to solid, solid rushes to fluid. There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman.
  History jeers at the attempts of physiologists to bind great original laws by the forms which flow from them. They make a rule; they say from observation what can and cannot be. In vain! Nature provides exceptions to every rule. She sends women to battle, and sets Hercules spinning; she enables women to bear immense burdens, cold, and frost; she enables the man, who feels maternal love, to nourish his infant like a mother.

• What I mean by the Muse is that unimpeded clearness of the intuitive powers, which a perfectly truthful adherence to every admonition of the higher instincts would bring to a finely organized human being. It may appear as prophecy or as poesy. ... and should these faculties have free play, I believe they will open new, deeper and purer sources of joyous inspiration than have as yet refreshed the earth.
  Let us be wise, and not impede the soul. Let her work as she will. Let us have one creative energy, one incessant revelation. Let it take what form it will, and let us not bind it by the past to man or woman, black or white.

• Heroes have filled the zodiac of beneficent labors, and then given up their mortal part to the fire without a murmur. Sages and lawgivers have bent their whole nature to the search for truth, and thought themselves happy if they could buy, with the sacrifice of all temporal ease and pleasure, one seed for the future Eden. Poets and priests have strung the lyre with heart-strings, poured out their best blood upon the altar which, reare'd anew from age to age, shall at last sustain the flame which rises to highest heaven. What shall we say of those who, if not so directly, or so consciously, in connection with the central truth, yet, led and fashioned by a divine instinct, serve no less to develop and interpret the open secret of love passing into life, the divine energy creating for the purpose of happiness; — of the artist, whose hand, drawn by a preexistent harmony to a certain medium, moulds it to expressions of life more highly and completely organized than are seen elsewhere, and, by carrying out the intention of nature, reveals her meaning to those who are not yet sufficiently matured to divine it; of the philosopher, who listens steadily for causes, and, from those obvious, infers those yet unknown; of the historian, who, in faith that all events must have their reason and their aim, records them, and lays up archives from which the youth of prophets may be fed. The man of science dissects the statement, verifies the facts, and demonstrates connection even where he cannot its purpose·

Plants of great vigor will almost always struggle into blossom, despite impediments.

• Plants of great vigor will almost always struggle into blossom, despite impediments. But there should be encouragement, and a free genial atmosphere for those of more timid sort, fair play for each in its own kind.

If nature is never bound down, nor the voice of inspiration stifled, that is enough.

• Harmony exists no less in difference than in likeness, if only the same key-note govern both parts. Woman the poem, man the poet; woman the heart, man the head; such divisions are only important when they are never to be transcended. If nature is never bound down, nor the voice of inspiration stifled, that is enough.

• What Woman needs is not as a woman to act or rule, but as a nature to grow, as an intellect to discern, as a soul to live freely and unimpeded.

• Those who are not intimately and permanently linked with others, are throw upon themselves; and, if they do not there find peace and incessant life, there is none to flatter them that they are not very poor, and very mean.
  A position which so constantly admonishes, may be of inestimable benefit. The person may gain, undistracted by other relationships, a closer communion with the one. Such a use is made of it by saints and sibyls.

• The position I early was enabled to take was one of self-reliance. And were all women as sure of their wants as I was, the result would be the same. But they are so overloaded with precepts and guardians who think that nothing is so much to be dreaded for a woman as originality of thought or character, that their minds are impeded with doubts till they lose their chance of fair, free proportions. The difficulty is to get them to the point from which they shall naturally develop self-respect, and learn self-help.

• Woman, self-centred, would never be absorbed by any relation it would be only an experience to her as to man. It is a vulgar error that love, a love, to Woman is her whole existence; she also is born for Truth and Love in their universal energy.

Always the soul says to us all, Cherish your best hopes as a faith, and abide by them in action. Such shall be the effectual fervent means to their fulfilment.

• I stand in the sunny noon of life. Objects no longer glitter in the dews of morning, neither are yet softened by the shadows of evening. Every spot is seen, every chasm revealed. Climbing the dusty hill, some fair effigies that once stood for symbols of human destiny have been broken; those I still have with me show defects in this broad light. Yet enough is left, even by experience, to point distinctly to the glories of that destiny; faint, but not to be mistaken streaks of the future day. I can say with the bard,
  "Though many have suffered shipwreck, still beat noble hearts."
  Always the soul says to us all, Cherish your best hopes as a faith, and abide by them in action. Such shall be the effectual fervent means to their fulfilment.

[edit] Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1852)

• There is a Polish countess here, who likes me much. She has been very handsome, still is, in the style of the full-blown rose. She is a widow, very rich, one of the emancipated women, naturally vivacious, and with talent. This woman envies me; she says, "How happy you are; so free, so serene, so attractive, so self-possessed!" I say not a word, but I do not look on myself as particularly enviable. A little money would have made me much more so; a little money would have enabled me to come here long ago, and find those that belong to me, or at least try my experiments; then my health would never have sunk, nor the best years of my life been wasted in useless friction. Had I money now, — could I only remain, take a faithful servant, and live alone, and still see those I love when it is best, that would suit me. It seems to me, very soon I shall be calmed, and begin to enjoy.
  • Letter (17 November 1847)

• Safety is not to be secured, then, by the wisest foresight. I shall embark more composedly in our merchant-ship, praying fervently, indeed, that it may not be my lot to lose my boy at sea, either by unsolaced illness, or amid the howling waves; or, if so, that Ossoli, Angelo, and I may go together, and that the anguish may be brief.
  • Letter (21 April 1850)

• I am absurdly fearful, and various omens have combined to give me a dark feeling. I am become indeed a miserable coward, for the sake of Angelino. I fear heat and cold, fear the voyage, fear biting poverty. I hope I shall not be forced to be as brave for him, as I have been for myself, and that, if I succeed to rear him, he will be neither a weak nor a bad man. But I love him too much! In case of mishap, however, I shall perish with my husband and my child, and we may be transferred to some happier state.
  • Letter (Spring 1850)
  • I am absurdly fearful about this voyage. Various little omens have combined to give me a dark feeling.... Perhaps we shall live to laugh at these. But in case of mishap I should perish with my husband and child, perhaps to be transferred to some happier state.
    • Letter to Marchioness Visconti Arconati (6 April 1850) as quoted in Margaret Fuller Ossoli by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, p. 274, the differences could be from differing translations or from omissions, as Emerson is said to have highly edited many of the letters as published in Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.

• I feel perfectly willing to stay my threescore years and ten, if it be thought I need so much tuition from this planet; but it seems to me that my future upon earth will soon close. It may be terribly trying, but it will not be so very long, now. God will transplant the root, if he wills to rear it into fruit-bearing.
  • Letter (Spring 1850)

• I have a vague expectation of some crisis, — I know not what. But it has long seemed, that, in the year 1850, I should stand on a plateau in the ascent of life, where I should be allowed to pause for a while, and take more clear and commanding views than ever before. Yet my life proceeds as regularly as the fates of a Greek tragedy, and I can but accept the pages as they turn.
  • Letter (Spring 1850)

• I long so much to see you! Should anything hinder our meeting upon earth, think of your daughter, as one who always wished, at least, to do her duty, and who always cherished you, according as her mind opened to discover excellence. ... I hope we shall be able to pass some time together yet, in this world. But, if God decrees otherwise, — here and HEREAFTER, — my dearest mother, "Your loving child, MARGARET."
  • Last letter to her mother, (14 May 1850)

[edit] At Home And Abroad (1856)

Full text online

• Art can only be truly art by presenting an adequate outward symbol of some fact in the interior life.
  • Part II, Things and Thoughts of Europe, p. 198

• My friends write to urge my return the talk of our country as the land of the future. It is so, but that spirit which made it all it is of value in my eyes, which gave me all hope with which I can sympathize for that future, is more alive here at present than in America. My country is at present spoiled by prosperity, stupid with the lust of gain, soiled by crime in its willing perpetuation of slavery, shamed by an unjust war, noble sentiment much forgotten even by individuals, the aims of politicians selfish or petty, the literature frivolous and venal. In Europe, amid the teachings of adversity, a nobler spirit is struggling — a spirit which cheers and animates mine. I hear earnest words of pure faith and love. I see deeds of brotherhood. This is what makes my America. I do not deeply distrust my country. She is not dead, but in my time she sleepeth, and the spirits of our fathers flame no more, but lies hid beneath the ashes. It will not be so long; bodies cannot live when the soul gets too overgrown with gluttony and falsehood.
  • Letter XXIV (19 April 1848), ** Part II, Things and Thoughts of Europe, p. 326

[edit] Life Without and Life Within (1859)

Life Without and Life Within: Or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems by Arthur Buckminster Fuller (1895 edition) (Downloadable PDF at Google Books Search)

[edit] Freedom and Truth

The shrine is vowed to freedom, but, my friend,
Freedom is but a means to gain an end.

• The shrine is vowed to freedom, but, my friend,
  Freedom is but a means to gain an end.
  Freedom should build the temple, but the shrine
  Be consecrate to thought still more divine.
  The human bliss which angel hopes foresaw
  Is liberty to comprehend the law.
  Give, then, thy book a larger scope and frame,
  Comprising means and end in Truth's great name.

[edit] Sub Rosa, Crux

The pass-word now is lost to that initiation full and free...

• In times of old, as we are told,
  When men more child-like at the feet
  Of Jesus sat, than now,
  A chivalry was known more bold
  Than ours, and yet of stricter vow,
  Of worship more complete.

Be to the best thou knowest ever true, Is all the creed...

• Knights of the Rosy Cross, they bore
  Its weight within the heart, but wore
  Without, devotion's sign in glistening ruby bright;
  The gall and vinegar they drank alone,
  But to the world at large would only own
  The wine of faith, sparkling with rosy light.

• The pass-word now is lost
  To that initiation full and free;
  Daily we pay the cost
  Of our slow schooling for divine degree.
  We know no means to feed an undying lamp;
  Our lights go out in every wind or damp.

• Though deepest dark our efforts should enfold,
  Unwearied mine to find the vein of gold;
  Forget not oft to lift the hope on high;
  The rosy dawn again shall fill the sky.

  And by that lovely light, all truth-revealed,
  The cherished forms which sad distrust concealed,
  Transfigured, yet the same, will round us stand,
  The kindred angels of a faithful band;
  Ruby and ebon cross both cast aside,
  No lamp is needed, for the night has died.

• Be to the best thou knowest ever true,
  Is all the creed;
  Then, by thy talisman of rosy hue,
  Or fenced with thorns that wearing thou must bleed,
  Or gentle pledge of Love's prophetic view,
  The faithful steps it will securely lead.

  Happy are all who reach that shore,
  And bathe in heavenly day,
  Happiest are those who high the banner bore,
  To marshal others on the way;
  Or waited for them, fainting and way-worn,
  By burdens overborne.

[edit] Flaxman

Absorbed in the creations of thy mind,
Forgetting daily self, my truest friend I find.

This is said to have been written in reference to Ralph Waldo Emerson.

• We deemed the secret lost, the spirit gone,
  Which spake in Greek simplicity of thought,
  And in the forms of gods and heroes wrought
  Eternal beauty from the sculptured stone —
  A higher charm than modern culture won,
  With all the wealth of metaphysic lore,
  Gifted to analyze, dissect explore.

• A many-colored light flows from our sun;
  Art, 'neath its beams a motley thread has spun;
  The prison modifies the perfect day;
  But thou hast known such mediums to shun,
  And cast once more on life a pure white ray.
  Absorbed in the creations of thy mind,
  Forgetting daily self, my truest friend I find.

[edit] My Seal-Ring

Mercury has cast aside
The signs of intellectual pride,
Freely offers thee the soul:
Art thou noble to receive?

• Mercury has cast aside
  The signs of intellectual pride,
  Freely offers thee the soul:
  Art thou noble to receive?
  Canst thou give or take the whole,
  Nobly promise and believe?
  Then thou wholly human art,
  A spotless, radiant, ruby heart,
  And the golden chain of love
  Has bound thee to the realm above.

• Guard thee from the power of evil;
  Who cannot trust, vows to the devil.

[edit] The Captured Wild Horse

See the wild herd nobly ranging,
Nature varying, not changing,
Lawful in their lawless ranging.

• On the boundless plain careering
  By an unseen compass steering, Wildly flying, reappearing, —
  With untamed fire their broad eyes glowing
  In every step a grand pride showing,
  Of no servile moment knowing, —

  Happy as the trees and flowers, In their instinct cradled hours,
  Happier in fuller powers, —

  See the wild herd nobly ranging,
  Nature varying, not changing,
  Lawful in their lawless ranging.

• Wouldst have the princely spirit bowed?
  Whisper only, speak not loud,
  Mark and leave him in the crowd.

  Thou need'st not spies nor jailers have;
  The free will serve thee like the slave,
  Coward shrinking from the brave.

[edit] The Thankful and the Thankless

• With equal sweetness the commissioned hours
  Shed light and dew upon both weeds and flowers.
  The weeds unthankful raise their vile heads high,
  Flaunting back insult to the gracious sky;
  While the dear flowers, wht fond humility,
  Uplift the eyelids of a starry eye
  In speechless homage, and, from grateful hearts,
  Perfume that homage all around imparts.

[edit] Prophecy and Fulfilment

• The pencil moved prophetic: together now men read
  In the fair book of nature, and find the hope they need.
  The wreath woven by the river is by the seaside worn,
  And one of fate's best arrows to its due mark is borne.

[edit] The One In All

One presence fill and floods the whole serene;
Nothing can be, nothing has ever been,
Except the one truth that creates the scene.

• There are who separate the eternal light
  In forms of man and woman, day and night;
  They cannot bear that God be essence quite.

• Existence is as deep a verity:
  Without the dual, where is unity?
  And the "I am"" cannot forbear to be;

  But from its primal nature forced to frame
  Mysteries, destinies of various name,
  Is forced to give that it has taught to claim.

• And dost thou seek to find the one in two?
  Only upon the old can build the new;
  The symbol which you seek is found in you.

• There are to whom each symbol is a mask;
  The life of love is a mysterious task;
  They want no answer, for they would not ask.

Live earnestly by turns without despair,
Nor seek a home till home be every where!

• A single thought transfuses every form;
  The sunny day is changed into the storm,
  For light is dark, hard soft, and cold is warm.

  One presence fill and floods the whole serene;
  Nothing can be, nothing has ever been,
  Except the one truth that creates the scene.

• You ask a faith, — they are content with faith;
  You ask to have, — but they reply "IT hath."
  There is no end, there need be no path.

• The day wears heavily, — why, then, ignore it;
  Peace is the soul's desire, — such thoughts restore it;
  The truth thou art, — it needs not implore it.

• The Presence all thy fancies supersedes,
  All that is done which thou wouldst seek in deeds,
  The wealth obliterates all seeming needs.

• To me, our destinies seem flower and fruit
  Born of an ever-generating root...

• I do not think we are deceived to grow,
  But that the crudest fancy, slightest show,
  Covers some separate truth that we may know.

  In the one Truth, each separate fact is true;
  Eternally in one I many view,
  And destinies through destiny pursue.

• This is my tendency; but can I say
  That this my thought leads the true, only way?
  I only know it constant leads, and I obey.

• I only know one prayer — "Give me the truth,
  Give me that colored whiteness, ancient youth,
  Complex and simple, seen in joy and ruth.

  Let me not by vain wishes bar my claim,
  Nor soothe my hunger by an empty name,
  Nor crucify the Son of man by hasty blame.

  But in the earth and fire, water and air,
  Live earnestly by turns without despair,
  Nor seek a home till home be every where!"

[edit] A Greeting

Life-flow of my natal hour, I will not weary of thy power,
Till in the changes of thy sound
A chord's three parts distinct are found.

• Thoughts which come at a call
  Are no better than if they came not at all
  Neither flower nor fruit,
  Yielding no root
  For plant, shrub, or tree.

• I prize thy gentle heart,
  Free from ambition, falsehood, or art,
  And thy good mind,
  Daily refined,
  By pure desire
  To fan the heaven-seeking fire.

[edit] Sistrum

A musical instrument of the ancients, employed by the Egyptians in the worship of Isis. It was to be kept in constant motion, and, according to Plutarch, was intended to indicate the necessity of constant motion on the part of men — the need of being often shaken by fierce trials and agitations when they become morbid or indolent. — Editor's note on the sistrum by Arthur Buckminster Fuller

• Triune, shaping, restless power,
  Life-flow from life's natal hour,
  No music chords are in thy sound;
  By some thou'rt but a rattle found;
  Yet, without thy ceaseless motion,
  To ice would turn their dead devotion.

• Life-flow of my natal hour, I will not weary of thy power,
  Till in the changes of thy sound
  A chord's three parts distinct are found.
  I will faithful move with thee,
  God-ordered, self-fed energy,
  Nature in eternity.

[edit] Dryad Song (1900)

Gathering strength, gaining breath, — naught can sever
Me from the Spirit of Life!

Published in An American Anthology 1787-1900: Selections, Illustrating the Editor's Critical Review of American Poetry in the Nineteenth Century (1900) by Edmund Clarence Stedman, p. 772

It was thy kiss, Love, that made me immortal...

• I am immortal! I know it! I feel it!
  Hope floods my heart with delight!
  Running on air mad with life dizzy, reeling,
  Upward I mount, — faith is sight, life is feeling,
  Hope is the day-star of might!

• It was thy kiss, Love, that made me immortal.
  • Compare: "Make me immortal with a kiss" Marlowe, Christopher, Faustus.

• Come, let us mount on the wings of the morning,
  Flying for joy of the flight,
  Wild with all longing, now soaring, now staying,
  Mingling like day and dawn, swinging and swaying,
  Hung like a cloud in the light:
  I am immortal! I feel it! I feel it!
  Love bears me up, love is might!

• Chance cannot touch me! Time cannot hush me!
  Fear, Hope, and Longing, at strife,
  Sink as I rise, on, on, upward forever,
  Gathering strength, gaining breath, — naught can sever
  Me from the Spirit of Life!

[edit] The Love Letters Of Margaret Fuller (1903)

PDF online at Google Book Search

• We will worship by impromptu symbols, till the religion is framed for all Humanity. The beauty grows around us daily, the trees are now all in blossom and some of the vines; there is a Crown Imperial just in perfection, to which I paid my evening worship by the light of the fire, which reached to us, and there are flashes of lightening too. But I do not like the lightening so well as once, having been in too great danger. Yet just now a noble flash falls upon my paper, it ought to have noble thoughts to illumine, instead of these little nothings, but indeed to-night I write only to say: thou dear, dear friend, and we must must meet soon.
  • Letter IV to James Nathan (March 1845)

• To feel that there is so quick a bound to intercourse, makes us prize the moment, but then also makes it so difficult to use. Yet this one thing I wish to say, where so many must be left unsaid. You tell me, that I may, probably never know you wholly. Indeed the obstacles of time and space may prevent my understanding the workings of character; many pages of my new book may be shut against me, better than to yourself. Perhaps? I believe in Ahnungen beyond anything.
  • Ahnungen means "Premonitions"; letter XIII to James Nathan (31 March 1845)

[edit] Unsourced

• A house is no home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.
  • Variant: A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.

• Drudgery is as necessary to call out the treasures of the mind, as harrowing and planting those of the earth.

• Essays, entitled critical, are epistles addressed to the public, through which the mind of the recluse relieves itself of its impressions.

• I am suffocated and lost when I have not the bright feeling of progression.

• I have urged on woman independence of man, not that I do not think the sexes mutually needed by one another, but because in woman this fact has led to an excessive devotion, which has cooled love, degraded marriage and prevented it her sex from being what it should be to itself or the other. I wish woman to live, first for God's sake. Then she will not take what is not fit for her from a sense of weakness and poverty. Then if she finds what she needs in man embodied, she will know how to love and be worthy of being loved.

• If you have knowledge, let others light their candles at it.
  • Variants: If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it.
    If you have knowledge, let others light their candles with it.
  • These have also been attributed to Thomas Fuller, sometimes in published works, but without a definite citation of either author.

• It is not because the touch of genius has roused genius to production, but because the admiration of genius has made talent ambitious, that the harvest is still so abundant.

• It should be remarked that, as the principle of liberty is better understood, and more nobly interpreted, a broader protest is made in behalf of women. As men become aware that few have had a fair chance, they are inclined to say that no women have had a fair chance.

• Men for the sake of getting a living forget to live.

• Most marvelous and enviable is that fecundity of fancy which can adorn whatever it touches, which can invest naked fact and dry reasoning with unlooked for beauty, make flowers bloom even on the brow of the precipice.

• The character and history of each child may be a new and poetic experience to the parent, if he will let it.

• The public must learn how to cherish the nobler and rarer plants, and to plant the aloe, able to wait a hundred years for it's bloom, or it's garden will contain, presently, nothing but potatoes and pot-herbs.

• Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

• Two persons love in one another the future good which they aid one another to unfold.

[edit] Misattributed

• Be what you would seem to be.
  • English proverb, used by many authors, including some prior to Margaret Fuller's time; Thomas Fuller expresses related thoughts in his "Panegyric" on Charles II, Section 21" in The History of the Worthies of England (1662):

Be you above your ancestors renown'd,
Whose goodness wisely doth your greatness bound;
And, knowing that you may be what you would,
Are pleased to be only what you should.

• When your dreams tire, they go underground and out of kindness that's where they stay.
  • Libby Houston, in the poem "Gold" in Necessity (1988)

• When people keep telling you that you can't do a thing, you kind of like to try it.
  • Margaret Chase Smith, quoted in More Than Petticoats : Remarkable Maine Women (2005) by Kate Kennedy

[edit] Quotes about Fuller

• She possessed more influence on the thought of American women than any woman previous to her time.
  • Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in History of Woman Suffrage

• In American literature she will remain a remarkable biographic phenomenon, while the tragic death of this Lycidas of women, a most painful personal story of shipwreck, was intensified by so many melancholy incidents that whoever, long years hence, may read them, will wonder how the gods could have been so pitiless, and why the life of new happiness and larger intellectual achievement which was before her should so suddenly have ended upon that savage and inhospitable shore.
  • Charles T. Congdon, in Reminiscences of a Journalist (1880), p. 121

• Without doubt Margaret Fuller stood first among women of the nineteenth century. ... Though today almost forgotten, Margaret Fuller still probably holds more firsts than any other American woman who ever lived. As editor of the transcendentalist Dial, she was the first woman editor of an important intellectual magazine. She was the first woman to write a book about the West and such experiences as sleeping in a barroom, shooting rapids in an Indian canoe, and witnessing maltreatment of the red man by the white man. She was the first woman to break the taboo against the female sex in the Harvard College Library. As columnist for Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune, she was the first U.S. woman journalist and and the first professional literary critic of cither sex in the United States.
  • Joseph Jay Deiss in "Humanity, said Edgar Allan Poe, is divided into Men, Women, and Margaret Fuller" in American Heritage magazine, Vol. 23, Issue 5 (August 1972)

• I remember that she made me laugh more than I liked; for I was, at that time, an eager scholar of ethics, and had tasted the sweets of solitude and stoicism, and I found something profane in the hours of amusing gossip into which she drew me...
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson in Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1852), p. 202

• She wore this circle of friends, when I first knew her, as a necklace of diamonds about her neck. They were so much to each other that Margaret seemed to represent them all, and to know her was to acquire a place with them. The confidences given her were their best, and she held them to them. She was an active, inspiring companion and correspondent, and all the art, the thought, the nobleness in New England seemed at that moment related to her and she to it. She was everywhere a welcome guest.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson in Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1852), p 213

She chose the Sistrum for her emblem, and had it carefully drawn with a view to its being engraved on a gem.

• Coincidences, good and bad, contretemps, seals, ciphers, mottoes, omens, anniversaries, names, dreams, are all of a certain importance to her. Her letters are often dated on some marked anniversary of her own, or of her correspondent's calendar. She signalized saints' days, "All-Souls," and "All-Saints," by poems, which had for her a mystical value.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson in Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1852), p. 220

• She chose the Sistrum for her emblem, and had it carefully drawn with a view to its being engraved on a gem. And I know not how many verses and legends came recommended to her by this symbolism. Her dreams, of course, partook of this symmetry. The same dream returns to her periodically, annually, and punctual to its night. One dream she marks in her journal as repeated for the fourth time: "In C., I at last distinctly recognized the figure of the early vision, whom I found after I had left A., who led me, on the bridge, towards the city, glittering in sunset, but, midway, the bridge went under water. I have often seen in her face that it was she, but refused to believe it."
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson in Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1852), p. 221

• Just before the forecastle sunk, the remaining sailors determined to leave.
  The steward, with whom the child had always been a great favorite, took it, almost by main force, and plunged with it into the sea; neither reached the shore alive. The Marquis Ossoli was soon afterwards washed away, but his wife remained in ignorance of his fate. The cook, who was the last person that reached the shore alive, said that the last words he heard her speak were: "I see nothing but death before me, — I shall never reach the shore." It was between two and three o'clock in the afternoon, and after lingering for about ten hours, exposed to the mountainous surf that swept over the vessel, with the contemplation of death constantly forced upon her mind, she was finally overwhelmed as the foremast fell.
  • Bayard Taylor, in a letter (23 July 1850) published in The New York Tribune, republished in At Home And Abroad Part IV "Homeward Voyage, and Memorials" (1859) by Arthur Buckminster Fuller

• Only her presence can give you the meaning of the name Margaret Fuller.
  • Elizabeth Sherman Hoar, as quoted in "Humanity, said Edgar Allan Poe, is divided into Men, Women, and Margaret Fuller" by Joseph Jay Deiss in American Heritage magazine, Vol. 23, Issue 5 (August 1972)

• "I accept the universe" is reported to have been a favorite utterance of our New England transcendentalist, Margaret Fuller; and when some one repeated this phrase to Thomas Carlyle, his sardonic comment is said to have been: "Gad! she'd better!" At bottom the whole concern of both morality and religion is with the manner of our acceptance of the universe. Do we accept it only in part and grudgingly, or heartily and altogether? Shall our protests against certain things in it be radical and unforgiving, or shall we think that, even with evil, there are ways of living that must lead to good? If we accept the whole, shall we do so as if stunned into submission — as Carlyle would have us — "Gad! we'd better!" — or shall we do so with enthusiastic assent? Morality pure and simple accepts the law of the whole which it finds reigning, so far as to acknowledge and obey it, but it may obey it with the heaviest and coldest heart, and never cease to feel it as a yoke. But for religion, in its strong and fully developed manifestations, the service of the highest never is felt as a yoke. Dull submission is left far behind, and a mood of welcome, which may fill any place on the scale between cheerful serenity and enthusiastic gladness, has taken its place.
  • William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)

• After having admired the women of Rome, say to yourself, ‘I too am beautiful!’ … In you I met a real person. I need not give you any other praise.
  • Adam Mickiewicz, as quoted in "Humanity, said Edgar Allan Poe, is divided into Men, Women, and Margaret Fuller" by Joseph Jay Deiss in American Heritage magazine, Vol. 23, Issue 5 (August 1972)

• The only woman to whom it has been given to touch what is decisive in the present world and to have a presentiment of the world of the future.
  • Adam Mickiewicz, as quoted in "Humanity, said Edgar Allan Poe, is divided into Men, Women, and Margaret Fuller" by Joseph Jay Deiss in American Heritage magazine, Vol. 23, Issue 5 (August 1972)

• Margaret had done her strenuous work under fire while her husband stood in daily peril of death and while she herself was cut off from all communication with her baby. Only after it was all over might Emerson even begin to measure the depth of the distress out of which she wrote him from Rome, “Let me feel, that, amid the fearful agitations of the world, there are pure hands, with healthful, even pulse, stretched out toward me, if I claim their grasp.” In fact, we do not know whether the heart that beat with this healthful, even pulse ever did comprehend.
  • Perry Miller in "I find no intellect comparable to my own" in American Heritage magazine, Vol. 8, Issue 2 (February 1957)

• If our imagination is challenged to picture what Margaret Fuller would have been like had she remained in Boston, it is positively staggered at trying to conceive what would have been the career of the Marchioness Ossoli in America. The wreck of the Elizabeth deprived the cultural history of this country of what would surely have been an exciting chapter.
  • Perry Miller in "I find no intellect comparable to my own" in American Heritage magazine, Vol. 8, Issue 2 (February 1957)

• Her specter haunted all who knew her, and many who did not. Henry James, born in New York in 1843, stood beside his father on a Hudson River excursion boat and heard Washington Irving tell that Margaret Fuller had been drowned the day before. Even at the age of seven this small boy was resolved to be one on whom nothing is lost, and he knew, if nobody else did, that a heroine had gone to a heroic death.
  • Perry Miller in "I find no intellect comparable to my own" in American Heritage magazine, Vol. 8, Issue 2 (February 1957)

• The ship struck at ten minutes after four A.M., and all hands, being mostly in their nightclothes, made haste to the forecastle, the water coming in at once. There they remained; the passengers in the forecastle, the crew above it, doing what they could. Every wave lifed the forecastle roof and washed over those within. The first man got ashore at nine; many from nine to noon. At flood-tide, about half past three o'clock, when the ship broke up entirely, they came out of the forecastle, and Margaret sat with her back to the foremast, with her hands on her knees, her husband and child already drowned. A great wave came and washed her aft. The steward had just before taken her child and started for shore. Both were drowned.
  • Henry David Thoreau in a letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson (25 July 1850), published in The Writings of Henry David Thoreau (1906), Vol. 6, p. 183-184

[edit] External links

Wikipedia has an article about:

Margaret Fuller

• Brief biography and links at American Transcendentalism Web
• Brief biography at UUA
• Brief biography at PBS
• "A Life Cut Short by the Sea" by George DeWan
• Works of Fuller at Project Gutenberg
• Summer On The Lakes, in 1843 (1844)
• "I find no intellect comparable to my own" in American Heritage magazine, Vol. 8, Issue 2 (February 1957) by Perry Miller
• "Humanity, said Edgar Allan Poe, is divided into Men, Women, and Margaret Fuller" in American Heritage magazine, Vol. 23, Issue 5 (August 1972) by Joseph Jay Deiss

Henery David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau (12 July 1817 - 6 May 1862) was an American writer and philosopher; born David Henry Thoreau

See also: Walden

Contents [hide] 1 Sourced 1.1 Journals (1838-1859) 1.2 Civil Disobedience (1849) 1.3 A Week on the Concord and Marrimack Rivers (1849) 1.3.1 Wednesday 1.3.2 Thursday 1.3.3 Friday 1.4 Walden (1854) 1.5 A Plea for Captain John Brown (1859) 1.6 Walking (1862) 1.7 Life Without Principle (1863) 1.8 The Dispersion of Seeds (1993) 2 Unsourced 3 Quotes about Thoreau 4 External links

[edit] Sourced

I am a parcel of vain strivings tied
By a chance bond together...

• I am a parcel of vain strivings tied
  By a chance bond together,
  Dangling this way and that, their links
  Were made so loose and wide,
  Methinks,
  For milder weather.
  • "I am a parcel of vain strivings tied", st. 1 (1841)

• But now I see I was not plucked for naught,
  And after in life's vase
  Of glass set while I might survive,
  But by a kind hand brought
  Alive
  To a strange place.
  • "I am a parcel of vain strivings tied", st. 6 (1841)

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!

• Great God, I ask thee for no meaner pelf
  Than that I may not disappoint myself,
  That in my action I may soar as high
  As I can now discern with this clear eye.
  • Prayer, st. 1 (1842)

• My books I'd fain cast off, I cannot read,
  'Twixt every page my thoughts go stray at large
  Down in the meadow, where is richer feed,
  And will not mind to hit their proper targe.
  • The Summer Rain, st. 1 (1842)

• Here while I lie beneath this walnut bough,
  What care I for the Greeks or for Troy town,
  If juster battles are enacted now
  Between the ants upon this hummock's crown?
  • The Summer Rain, st. 3

• 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)

It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?

• The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free.
  • Slavery in Massachusetts (1854)

• The fate of the country does not depend on how you vote at the polls — the worst man is as strong as the best at that game; it does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning.
  • Slavery in Massachusetts

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

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.

• Let me suggest a theme for you: to state to yourself precisely and completely what that walk over the mountains amounted to for you, — returning to this essay again and again, until you are satisfied that all that was important in your experience is in it. Give this good reason to yourself for having gone over the mountains, for mankind is ever going over a mountain. Don't suppose that you can tell it precisely the first dozen times you try, but at 'em again, especially when, after a sufficient pause, you suspect that you are touching the heart or summit of the matter, reiterate your blows there, and account for the mountain to yourself. Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.
  • 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)

• You ask particularly after my health. I suppose that I have not many months to live; but, of course, I know nothing about it. I may add that I am enjoying existence as much as ever, and regret nothing.
  • His last letter, to Myron Benton (31 March 1862)

[edit] Journals (1838-1859)

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...

• Truth, Goodness, Beauty — those celestial thrins,
  Continually are born; e'en now the Universe,
  With thousand throats, and eke with greener smiles,
  Its joy confesses at their recent birth.
  • June 14, 1838

• Sphere Music — Some sounds seem to reverberate along the plain, and then settle to earth again like dust; such are Noise, Discord, Jargon. But such only as spring heavenward, and I may catch from steeples and hilltops in their upward course, which are the more refined parts of the former, are the true sphere music — pure, unmixed music — in which no wail mingles.
  • August 5, 1838

• That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another's. We see so much only as we possess.
  • June 22, 1839

You might as well think to go in pursuit of the rainbow, and embrace it on the next hill, as to embrace the whole of poetry even in thought.

• 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

Aeschylus had a clear eye for the commonest things. His genius was only an enlarged common sense.

• Poetry — No definition of poetry is adequate unless it be poetry itself. The most accurate analysis by the rarest wisdom is yet insufficient, and the poet will instantly prove it false by setting aside its requisitions. It is indeed all that we do not know. The poet does not need to see how meadows are something else than earth, grass, and water, but how they are thus much. He does not need discover that potato blows are as beautiful as violets, as the farmer thinks, but only how good potato blows are. The poem is drawn out from under the feet of the poet, his whole weight has rested on this ground. It has a logic more severe than the logician's. You might as well think to go in pursuit of the rainbow, and embrace it on the next hill, as to embrace the whole of poetry even in thought.
  • January 26, 1840

• Aeschylus had a clear eye for the commonest things. His genius was only an enlarged common sense. He adverts with chaste severity to all natural facts. His sublimity is Greek sincerity and simpleness, naked wonder which mythology had not helped to explain... Whatever the common eye sees at all and expresses as best it may, he sees uncommonly and describes with rare completeness. The multitude that thronged the theatre could no doubt go along with him to the end... The social condition of genius is the same in all ages. Aeschylus was undoubtedly alone and without sympathy in his simple reverence for the mystery of the universe.
  • January 29, 1840

• An early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.
  • April 20, 1840

Our life revolves unceasingly, but the centre is ever the same, and the wise will regard only the seasons of the soul.

• Have no mean hours, but be grateful for every hour, and accept what it brings. The reality will make any sincere record respectable. No day will have been wholly misspent, if one sincere, thoughtful page has been written. Let the daily tide leave some deposit on these pages, as it leaves sand and shells on the shore. So much increase of terra firma. this may be a calendar of the ebbs and flows of the soul; and on these sheets as a beach, the waves may cast up pearls and seaweed.
  • July 6, 1840

• Who looks in the sun will see no light else; but also he will see no shadow. Our life revolves unceasingly, but the centre is ever the same, and the wise will regard only the seasons of the soul.
  • March 10, 1841

• We are as much as we see. Faith is sight and knowledge. The hands only serve the eyes.
  • April 9, 1841

• The Indian...stands free and unconstrained in Nature, is her inhabitant and not her guest, and wears her easily and gracefully. But the civilized man has the habits of the house. His house is a prison.
  • April 26, 1841

For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms, and did my duty faithfully, though I never received one cent for it.

• It is a great art to saunter.
  • April 26, 1841

• A slight sound at evening lifts me up by the ears, and makes life seem inexpressibly serene and grand. It may be Uranus, or it may be in the shutter.
  • July 10-12, 1841

• We are apt to imagine that this hubbub of Philosophy, Literature, and Religion, which is heard in pulpits, lyceums, and parlors, vibrates through the universe, and is as catholic a sound as the creaking of the earth's axle. But if a man sleeps soundly, he will forget it all between sunset and dawn.
  • January 6, 1842

Nothing is so much to be feared as fear. Atheism may comparatively be popular with God himself.

• One cannot too soon forget his errors and misdemeanors. To dwell long upon them is to add to the offense. Repentance and sorrow can only be displaced by something better, which is as free and original as if they had not been.
  • January 9, 1842

• And the cost of a thing it will be remembered is the amount of life it requires to be exchanged for it.
  • After December 6, 1845

• For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms, and did my duty faithfully, though I never received one cent for it.
  • After February 22, 1846

• Men go to a fire for entertainment. When I see how eagerly men will run to a fire, whether in warm or in cold weather, by day or by night, dragging an engine at their heels, I'm astonished to perceive how good a purpose the level of excitement is made to serve.
  • June, 1850

• And now, at half-past ten o'clock, I hear the cockerels crow in Hubbard's barns, and morning is already anticipated. It is the feathered, wakeful thought in us that anticipates the following day.
  • July 11, 1851

The bluebird carries the sky on his back.

• How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
  • August 19, 1851

• Nothing is so much to be feared as fear. Atheism may comparatively be popular with God himself.
  • September 7, 1851

• The bluebird carries the sky on his back.
  • April 3, 1852

• The perception of beauty is a moral test.
  • June 21, 1852

• The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.
  • July 14, 1852

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.

• Every poet has trembled on the verge of science.
  • July 18, 1852

• Fire is the most tolerable third party.
  • January 2, 1853

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

That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.

• Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.
  • January 5, 1856

• The same law that shapes the earth-star shapes the snow-star. As surely as the petals of a flower are fixed, each of these countless snow-stars comes whirling to earth...these glorious spangles, the sweeping of heaven's floor.
  • January 5, 1856

• That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
  • March 11, 1856

• 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

• It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves.
  • August 30, 1856

Any fool can make a rule
And any fool will mind it.

• 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

• The commonest and cheapest sounds, as the barking of a dog, produce the same effect on fresh and healthy ears that the rarest music does. It depends on your appetite for sound. Just as a crust is sweeter to a healthy appetite than confectionery to a pampered or diseased one.
  • December 27, 1857

• You must love the crust of the earth on which you dwell more than the sweet crust of any bread or cake; you must be able to extract nutriment out of a sand heap.
  • January 25, 1858

• The savage in man is never quite eradicated.
  • September 26, 1859

• Any fool can make a rule
  And any fool will mind it.
  • February 3, 1860

[edit] Civil Disobedience (1849)

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.

• 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.

A government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it...

• 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.

• A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves. Only his vote can hasten the abolition of slavery who asserts his own freedom by his vote.

Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one.

• 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.

• Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?

• I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.

• Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one.

• Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison... the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor.

• I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it.

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

• They who know of no purer sources of truth, who have traced up its stream no higher, stand, and wisely stand, by the Bible and the Constitution, and drink at it there with reverence and humility; but they who behold where it comes trickling into this lake or that pool, gird up their loins once more, and continue their pilgrimage toward its fountain-head.

• 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.

• For eighteen hundred years, though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written; yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of legislation?

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.

• 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.

• The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual.

• We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.

• 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.
  • Final lines

[edit] A Week on the Concord and Marrimack Rivers (1849)

To some extent, mythology is only the most ancient history and biography. So far from being false or fabulous in the common sense, it contains only enduring and essential truth...

• To some extent, mythology is only the most ancient history and biography. So far from being false or fabulous in the common sense, it contains only enduring and essential truth, the I and you, the here and there, the now and then, being omitted. Either time or rare wisdom writes it. Before printing was discovered, a century was equal to a thousand years. The poet is he who can write some pure mythology to-day without the aid of posterity

In the mythus a superhuman intelligence uses the unconscious thoughts and dreams of men as its hieroglyphics to address men unborn.

• The hidden significance of these fables which is sometimes thought to have been detected, the ethics running parallel to the poetry and history, are not so remarkable as the readiness with which they may be made to express a variety of truths. As if they were the skeletons of still older and more universal truths than any whose flesh and blood they are for the time made to wear. It is like striving to make the sun, or the wind, or the sea symbols to signify exclusively the particular thoughts of our day. But what signifies it? In the mythus a superhuman intelligence uses the unconscious thoughts and dreams of men as its hieroglyphics to address men unborn. In the history of the human mind, these glowing and ruddy fables precede the noonday thoughts of men, as Aurora the sun's rays. The matutine intellect of the poet, keeping in advance of the glare of philosophy, always dwells in this auroral atmosphere.

You can hardly convince a man of an error in a lifetime, but must content yourself with the reflection that the progress of science is slow. If he is not convinced, his grandchildren may be.

• You can hardly convince a man of an error in a lifetime, but must content yourself with the reflection that the progress of science is slow. If he is not convinced, his grandchildren may be.

The great god Pan is not dead, as was rumored. No god ever dies. Perhaps of all the gods of New England and of ancient Greece, I am most constant at his shrine.

• I am not sure but I should betake myself in extremities to the liberal divinities of Greece, rather than to my country's God. Jehovah, though with us he has acquired new attributes, is more absolute and unapproachable, but hardly more divine, than Jove. He is not so much of a gentleman, not so gracious and catholic, he does not exert so intimate and genial an influence on nature, as many a god of the Greeks.

• The Grecian are youthful and erring and fallen gods, with the vices of men, but in many important respects essentially of the divine race. In my Pantheon, Pan still reigns in his pristine glory, with his ruddy face, his flowing beard, and his shaggy body, his pipe and his crook, his nymph Echo, and his chosen daughter Iambe; for the great god Pan is not dead, as was rumored. No god ever dies. Perhaps of all the gods of New England and of ancient Greece, I am most constant at his shrine.

• It seems to me that the god that is commonly worshipped in civilized countries is not at all divine, though he bears a divine name, but is the overwhelming authority and respectability of mankind combined. Men reverence one another, not yet God. If I thought that I could speak with discrimination and impartiality of the nations of Christendom, I should praise them, but it tasks me too much. They seem to be the most civil and humane, but I may be mistaken.

• There are various, nay, incredible faiths; why should we be alarmed at any of them? What man believes, God believes.

• 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.

• Have you learned the alphabet of heaven and can count three? Do you know the number of God's family? Can you put mysteries into words? Do you presume to fable of the ineffable? Pray, what geographer are you, that speak of heaven's topography? Whose friend are you that speak of God's personality? ... Tell me of the height of the mountains of the moon, or of the diameter of space, and I may believe you, but of the secret history of the Almighty, and I shall pronounce thee mad.

• Some old poet's grand imagination is imposed on us as adamantine everlasting truth, and God's own word! Pythagoras says, truly enough, "A true assertion respecting God, is an assertion of God"; but we may well doubt if there is any example of this in literature.

It is remarkable that, notwithstanding the universal favor with which the New Testament is outwardly received, and even the bigotry with which it is defended, there is no hospitality shown to, there is no appreciation of, the order of truth with which it deals.

• The New Testament is an invaluable book, though I confess to having been slightly prejudiced against it in my very early days by the church and the Sabbath school, so that it seemed, before I read it, to be the yellowest book in the catalogue. Yet I early escaped from their meshes. It was hard to get the commentaries out of one's head and taste its true flavor. — I think that Pilgrim's Progress is the best sermon which has been preached from this text; almost all other sermons that I have heard, or heard of, have been but poor imitations of this. — It would be a poor story to be prejudiced against the Life of Christ because the book has been edited by Christians.

• It is remarkable that, notwithstanding the universal favor with which the New Testament is outwardly received, and even the bigotry with which it is defended, there is no hospitality shown to, there is no appreciation of, the order of truth with which it deals.

• It would be worthy of the age to print together the collected Scriptures or Sacred Writings of the several nations, the Chinese, the Hindoos, the Persians, the Hebrews, and others, as the Scripture of mankind. The New Testament is still, perhaps, too much on the lips and in the hearts of men to be called a Scripture in this sense. Such a juxtaposition and comparison might help to liberalize the faith of men. This is a work which Time will surely edit, reserved to crown the labors of the printing-press. This would be the Bible, or Book of Books, which let the missionaries carry to the uttermost parts of the earth.

• The vessel, though her masts be firm,
  Beneath her copper bears a worm.
  • Monday, Though All the Fates Should Prove Unkind, st. 2

• Far from New England's blustering shore,
  New England's worm her hulk shall bore,
  And sink her in the Indian seas,
  Twine, wine, and hides, and China teas.
  • Monday, Though All the Fates Should Prove Unkind, st. 2

• My life has been the poem I would have writ,
  But I could not both live and utter it.
  • My Life Has Been a Poem I Would Have Writ

[edit] Wednesday

Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.

• It would be worth the while to look closely into the eye which has been open and seeing at such hours, and in such solitudes, its dull, yellowish, greenish eye. Methinks my own soul must be a bright invisible green.

• It takes two to speak the truth, — one to speak, and another to hear.

• Even the death of Friends will inspire us as much as their lives. They will leave consolation to the mourners, as the rich leave money to defray the expenses of their funerals, and their memories will be incrusted over with sublime and pleasing thoughts, as monuments of other men are overgrown with moss; for our Friends have no place in the graveyard.

• This world is but canvas to our imaginations.

• Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.

[edit] Thursday

The unconsciousness of man is the consciousness of God.

• Go where we will on the surface of things, men have been there before us.

• The frontiers are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man fronts a fact, though that fact be his neighbor, there is an unsettled wilderness between him and Canada, between him and the setting sun, or, farther still, between him and it.

• A true account of the actual is the rarest poetry, for common sense always takes a hasty and superficial view.

• Poetry is the mysticism of mankind.

• A poem is one undivided unimpeded expression fallen ripe into literature, and it is undividedly and unimpededly received by those for whom it was matured.

• If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.

• The unconsciousness of man is the consciousness of God.

[edit] Friday

• As if our birth had at first sundered things, and we had been thrust up through into nature like a wedge, and not till the wound heals and the scar disappears, do we begin to discover where we are, and that nature is one and continuous everywhere.

• What are the earth and all its interests beside the deep surmise which pierces and scatters them?

• It is so rare to meet with a man out-doors who cherishes a worthy thought in his mind, which is independent of the labor of his hands.

• The eye may see for the hand, but not for the mind.

[edit] Walden (1854)

These are just a few samples, for more quotes from this work see: Walden.

Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

• 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.

• ...men remain in their present low and primitive condition; but if they should feel the influence of the spring of springs arousing them, they would of necessity rise to a higher and more ethereal life.

• Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

• Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.

• 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.

• Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at.

• 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.

• 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."

[edit] A Plea for Captain John Brown (1859)

I hear many condemn these men because they were so few. When were the good and the brave ever in a majority?

• I do not wish to force my thoughts upon you, but I feel forced myself. Little as I know of Captain Brown, I would fain do my part to correct the tone and the statements of the newspapers, and of my countrymen generally, respecting his character and actions. It costs us nothing to be just. We can at least express our sympathy with, and admiration of, him and his companions, and that is what I now propose to do.

• He would have left a Greek accent slanting the wrong way, and righted up a falling man.

• I hear many condemn these men because they were so few. When were the good and the brave ever in a majority? Would you have had him wait till that time came? — till you and I came over to him? The very fact that he had no rabble or troop of hirelings about him would alone distinguish him from ordinary heroes. His company was small indeed, because few could be found worthy to pass muster. Each one who there laid down his life for the poor and oppressed was a picked man, culled out of many thousands, if not millions; apparently a man of principle, of rare courage, and devoted humanity; ready to sacrifice his life at any moment for the benefit of his fellow-man.

• It was his peculiar doctrine that a man has a perfect right to interfere by force with the slaveholder, in order to rescue the slave. I agree with him. They who are continually shocked by slavery have some right to be shocked by the violent death of the slaveholder, but no others.

• I speak for the slave when I say that I prefer the philanthropy of Captain Brown to that philanthropy which neither shoots me nor liberates me.

• I do not wish to kill nor to be killed, but I can foresee circumstances in which both these things would be by me unavoidable. We preserve the so-called peace of our community by deeds of petty violence every day. Look at the policeman's billy and handcuffs! Look at the jail! Look at the gallows! Look at the chaplain of the regiment! We are hoping only to live safely on the outskirts of this provisional army. So we defend ourselves and our hen-roosts, and maintain slavery. I know that the mass of my countrymen think that the only righteous use that can be made of Sharp's rifles and revolvers is to fight duels with them, when we are insulted by other nations, or to hunt Indians, or shoot fugitive slaves with them, or the like. I think that for once the Sharp's rifles and the revolvers were employed in a righteous cause. The tools were in the hands of one who could use them.

• I am here to plead his cause with you. I plead not for his life, but for his character — his immortal life; and so it becomes your cause wholly, and is not his in the least. Some eighteen hundred years ago Christ was crucified; this morning, perchance, Captain Brown was hung. These are the two ends of a chain which is not without its links. He is not Old Brown any longer; he is an angel of light.

[edit] Walking (1862)

"Walking" began as a lecture called "The Wild," delivered by Henry at the Concord Lyceum on April 23, 1851. He gave this lecture many times, developing it into the essay finally published in the Atlantic Monthly after his death, in 1862.

In wildness is the preservation of the world.

• In wildness is the preservation of the world.

• Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him.

• Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity is open.

• There are other letters for the child to learn than those which Cadmus invented.

[edit] Life Without Principle (1863)

This essay was derived from the lecture "What Shall It Profit?" which Thoreau first delivered on 6 December 1854, at Railroad Hall in Providence, Rhode Island. He delivered it several times over the next two years, and edited it for publication before he died in 1862. It was first published in the October 1863 issue of The Atlantic Monthly where it was given its modern title.

The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.

• The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer. I am surprised, as well as delighted, when this happens, it is such a rare use he would make of me, as if he were acquainted with the tool.

If a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer...

• I take it for granted, when I am invited to lecture anywhere, — for I have had a little experience in that business, — that there is a desire to hear what I think on some subject, though I may be the greatest fool in the country, — and not that I should say pleasant things merely, or such as the audience will assent to; and I resolve, accordingly, that I will give them a strong dose of myself. They have sent for me, and engaged to pay for me, and I am determined that they shall have me, though I bore them beyond all precedent.

• I will not talk about people a thousand miles off, but come as near home as I can. As the time is short, I will leave out all the flattery, and retain all the criticism.
  Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives.

• If a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. As if a town had no interest in its forests but to cut them down!

• Most men would feel insulted, if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now.

• The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse. If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself.

• Those services which the community will most readily pay for it is most disagreeable to render. You are paid for being something less than a man.

• As for my own business, even that kind of surveying which I could do with most satisfaction my employers do not want. They would prefer that I should do my work coarsely and not too well, ay, not well enough. When I observe that there are different ways of surveying, my employer commonly asks which will give him the most land, not which is most correct.

• Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.

• The community has no bribe that will tempt a wise man. You may raise money enough to tunnel a mountain, but you cannot raise money enough to hire a man who is minding his own business. An efficient and valuable man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not. The inefficient offer their inefficiency to the highest bidder, and are forever expecting to be put into office. One would suppose that they were rarely disappointed.

You must get your living by loving.

• Perhaps I am more than usually jealous with respect to my freedom. I feel that my connection with and obligation to society are still very slight and transient. Those slight labors which afford me a livelihood, and by which it is allowed that I am to some extent serviceable to my contemporaries, are as yet commonly a pleasure to me, and I am not often reminded that they are a necessity. So far I am successful. But I foresee, that, if my wants should be much increased, the labor required to supply them would become a drudgery. If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure, that, for me, there would be nothing left worth living for.

• I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living. All great enterprises are self-supporting. The poet, for instance, must sustain his body by his poetry, as a steam planing-mill feeds its boilers with the shavings it makes. You must get your living by loving.

• Merely to come into the world the heir of a fortune is not to be born, but to be still-born, rather. To be supported by the charity of friends, or a government-pension, — provided you continue to breathe, — by whatever fine synonymes you describe these relations, is to go into the almshouse.

• In the Catholic Church, especially, they go into chancery, make a clean confession, give up all, and think to start again. Thus men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up.

A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.

• The title wise is, for the most part, falsely applied. How can one be a wise man, if he does not know any better how to live than other men? — if he is only more cunning and intellectually subtle?

• The rush to California, for instance, and the attitude, not merely of merchants, but of philosophers and prophets, so called, in relation to it, reflect the greatest disgrace on mankind. That so many are ready to live by luck, and so get the means of commanding the labor of others less lucky, without contributing any value to society!

• I did not know that mankind were suffering for want of gold. I have seen a little of it. I know that it is very malleable, but not so malleable as wit. A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.

• Men rush to California and Australia as if the true gold were to be found in that direction; but that is to go to the very opposite extreme to where it lies. They go prospecting farther and farther away from the true lead, and are most unfortunate when they think themselves most successful.

• Howitt says of the man who found the great nugget which weighed twenty-eight pounds, at the Bendigo diggings in Australia: — "He soon began to drink; got a horse, and rode all about, generally at full gallop, and, when he met people, called out to inquire if they knew who he was, and then kindly informed them that he was 'the bloody wretch that had found the nugget.' At last he rode full speed against a tree, and nearly knocked his brains out." I think, however, there was no danger of that, for he had already knocked his brains out against the nugget.

A little thought is sexton to all the world.

• It is remarkable that among all the preachers there are so few moral teachers. The prophets are employed in excusing the ways of men.

• In our science and philosophy, even, there is commonly no true and absolute account of things. The spirit of sect and bigotry has planted its hoof amid the stars. You have only to discuss the problem, whether the stars are inhabited or not, in order to discover it.

• Of what significance the things you can forget? A little thought is sexton to all the world.

• I hardly know an intellectual man, even, who is so broad and truly liberal that you can think aloud in his society. Most with whom you endeavor to talk soon come to a stand against some institution in which they appear to hold stock, — that is, some particular, not universal, way of viewing things.

• In some lyceums they tell me that they have voted to exclude the subject of religion. But how do I know what their religion is, and when I am near to or far from it? I have walked into such an arena and done my best to make a clean breast of what religion I have experienced, and the audience never suspected what I was about.

• To speak impartially, the best men that I know are not serene, a world in themselves. For the most part, they dwell in forms, and flatter and study effect only more finely than the rest. We select granite for the underpinning of our houses and barns; we build fences of stone; but we do not ourselves rest on an underpinning of granitic truth, the lowest primitive rock. Our sills are rotten.

It requires more than a day's devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a day.

• While there are manners and compliments we do not meet, we do not teach one another the lessons of honesty and sincerity that the brutes do, or of steadiness and solidity that the rocks do. The fault is commonly mutual, however; for we do not habitually demand any more of each other.

• When our life ceases to be inward and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip. We rarely meet a man who can tell us any news which he has not read in a newspaper, or been told by his neighbor; and, for the most part, the only difference between us and our fellow is, that he has seen the newspaper, or been out to tea, and we have not. In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post-office.

• I do not know but it is too much to read one newspaper a week. I have tried it recently, and for so long it seems to me that I have not dwelt in my native region. The sun, the clouds, the snow, the trees say not so much to me. You cannot serve two masters. It requires more than a day's devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a day.

• We may well be ashamed to tell what things we have read or heard in our day. I do not know why my news should be so trivial, — considering what one's dreams and expectations are, why the developments should be so paltry. The news we hear, for the most part, is not news to our genius. It is the stalest repetition.

• We do not live for idle amusement. I would not run round a corner to see the world blow up.

Read not the Times. Read the Eternities.

• Not without a slight shudder at the danger, I often perceive how near I had come to admitting into my mind the details of some trivial affair, — the news of the street; and I am astonished to observe how willing men are to lumber their minds with such rubbish, — to permit idle rumors and incidents of the most insignificant kind to intrude on ground which should be sacred to thought. Shall the mind be a public arena, where the affairs of the street and the gossip of the tea-table chiefly are discussed? Or shall it be a quarter of heaven itself, — an hypæthral temple, consecrated to the service of the gods? I find it so difficult to dispose of the few facts which to me are significant, that I hesitate to burden my attention with those which are insignificant, which only a divine mind could illustrate. Such is, for the most part, the news in newspapers and conversation. It is important to preserve the mind's chastity in this respect.

• It is so hard to forget what it is worse than useless to remember! If I am to be a thoroughfare, I prefer that it be of the mountain-brooks, the Parnassian streams, and not the town-sewers. There is inspiration, that gossip which comes to the ear of the attentive mind from the courts of heaven. There is the profane and stale revelation of the bar-room and the police court. The same ear is fitted to receive both communications. Only the character of the hearer determines to which it shall be open, and to which closed. I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality.

Where there is a lull of truth, an institution springs up. But the truth blows right on over it, nevertheless, and at length blows it down.

• Read not the Times. Read the Eternities. Conventionalities are at length as bad as impurities. Even the facts of science may dust the mind by their dryness, unless they are in a sense effaced each morning, or rather rendered fertile by the dews of fresh and living truth. Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven. Yes, every thought that passes through the mind helps to wear and tear it, and to deepen the ruts, which, as in the streets of Pompeii, evince how much it has been used. How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate, whether we had better know them, — had better let their peddling-carts be driven, even at the slowest trot or walk, over that bridge of glorious span by which we trust to pass at last from the farthest brink of time to the nearest shore of eternity! Have we no culture, no refinement, — but skill only to live coarsely and serve the Devil? — to acquire a little worldly wealth, or fame, or liberty, and make a false show with it, as if we were all husk and shell, with no tender and living kernel to us? Shall our institutions be like those chestnut-burs which contain abortive nuts, perfect only to prick the fingers?

• Do we call this the land of the free? What is it to be free from King George and continue the slaves of King Prejudice? What is it to be born free and not to live free? What is the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom? Is it a freedom to be slaves, or a freedom to be free, of which we boast? We are a nation of politicians, concerned about the outmost defences only of freedom. It is our children's children who may perchance be really free.

• With respect to a true culture and manhood, we are essentially provincial still, not metropolitan, — mere Jonathans. We are provincial, because we do not find at home our standards, — because we do not worship truth, but the reflection of truth, — because we are warped and narrowed by an exclusive devotion to trade and commerce and manufactures and agriculture and the like, which are but means, and not the end.

• The finest manners in the world are awkwardness and fatuity, when contrasted with a finer intelligence.

• Where there is a lull of truth, an institution springs up. But the truth blows right on over it, nevertheless, and at length blows it down.

Why should we not meet, not always as dyspeptics, to tell our bad dreams, but sometimes as eupeptics, to congratulate each other on the ever glorious morning?

• What is called politics is comparatively something so superficial and inhuman, that, practically, I have never fairly recognized that it concerns me at all. The newspapers, I perceive, devote some of their columns specially to politics or government without charge; and this, one would say, is all that saves it; but, as I love literature, and, to some extent, the truth also, I never read those columns at any rate. I do not wish to blunt my sense of right so much.

• Those things which now most engage the attention of men, as politics and the daily routine, are, it is true, vital functions of human society, but should be unconsciously performed, like the corresponding functions of the physical body. They are infra-human, a kind of vegetation. I sometimes awake to a half-consciousness of them going on about me, as a man may become conscious of some of the processes of digestion in a morbid state, and so have the dyspepsia, as it is called.

• Politics is, as it were, the gizzard of society, full of grit and gravel, and the two political parties are its two opposite halves, — sometimes split into quarters, it may be, which grind on each other. Not only individuals, but States, have thus a confirmed dyspepsia, which expresses itself, you can imagine by what sort of eloquence. Thus our life is not altogether a forgetting, but also, alas! to a great extent, a remembering of that which we should never have been conscious of, certainly not in our waking hours. Why should we not meet, not always as dyspeptics, to tell our bad dreams, but sometimes as eupeptics, to congratulate each other on the ever glorious morning? I do not make an exorbitant demand, surely.

Who could believe in prophecies of Daniel or of Miller that the world would end this summer, while one milkweed with faith matured its seeds?

[edit] The Dispersion of Seeds (1993)

Manuscripts of Thoreau published in Faith in a Seed: The Dispersion of Seeds and Other Late Natural History Writings (1993) edited by Bradley P. Dean

• Who could believe in prophecies of Daniel or of Miller that the world would end this summer, while one milkweed with faith matured its seeds?

[edit] Unsourced

• My life is like a stroll upon the beach,
  As near the ocean's edge as I can go.
  • The Fisher's Boy.

• I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
  • Solitude.

• Whate'er we leave to God, God does
  And blesses us.
  • Inspiration.

• I hear beyond the range of sound,
  I see beyond the range of sight,
  New earths and skies and seas around,
  And in my day the sun doth pale his light.
  • Inspiration.

• She with one breath attunes the spheres,
  And also my poor human heart.
  • Inspiration.

• Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.
  • Walden.

• It is true, I never assisted the sun materially in his rising; but, doubt not, it was of the last importance only to be present at it. 1
  • Walden. Compare Rostand, Chantecler, "Hymn to the Sun", page 998.

• Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. **Walden: Thoreau's classic account of the two years he spent living in a cabin at Walden Pond. (Non-Fiction, 1854, 251 pages)

• Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.
  • This seems to be a paraphrase and alteration of his statement in Walden (1854): "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation."

• Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.

• Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.
  • [1]

[edit] Quotes about Thoreau

• Thoreau believed that one of the arts of life was to make the most of it. He loved the multum in parvo, or pot-luck; to boil up the little into the big. Thus, he was in the habit of saying, — Give me healthy senses, let me be thoroughly alive, and breathe freely in the very flood-tide of the living world. But this should have availed him little, if he had not been at the same time copiously endowed with the power of recording what he imbibed. His senses truly lived twice.
  • William Ellery Channing in Thoreau: the Poet-naturalist: With Memorial Verses (1873), Ch. 11 Multum In Parvo

• His words also were as distinct and true to the ear as those of a great singer, and he had Tennyson's splendid gift in this, that he never went back on his tracks to pick up the fallen loops of a sentence as commonplace talkers do. He would hesitate for an instant now and then, waiting for the right word, or would pause with a pathetic patience to master the trouble in his chest, but when he was through the sentence was perfect and entire, lacking nothing, and the word was so purely one with the man that when I read his books now and then I do not hear my own voice within my reading but the voice I heard that day.
  • Robert Collyer in "Thoreau" an address at the Church of the Messiah (28 January 1883); first published in Clear Grit: A Collection of Lectures, Addresses and Poems (1913)

• He chose to be rich by making his wants few, and supplying them himself. In his travels, he used the railroad only to get over so much country as was unimportant to the present purpose, walking hundreds of miles, avoiding taverns, buying a lodging in farmers' and fishermen's houses, as cheaper, and more agreeable to him, and because there he could better find the men and the information he wanted.
  There was somewhat military in his nature not to be subdued, always manly and able, but rarely tender, as if he did not feel himself except in opposition. He wanted a fallacy to expose, a blunder to pillory, I may say required a little sense of victory, a roll of the drum, to call his powers into full exercise.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson in "Thoreau" in The Atlantic Monthly (August 1862)

• Idealist as he was, standing for abolition of slavery, abolition of tariffs, almost for abolition of government, it is needless to say he found himself not only unrepresented in actual politics, but almost equally opposed to every class of reformers.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson in "Thoreau" in The Atlantic Monthly (August 1862)

• I think his fancy for referring everything to the meridian of Concord did not grow out of any ignorance or depreciation of other longitudes or latitudes, but was rather a playful expression of his conviction of the indifferency of all places, and that the best place for each is where he stands. He expressed it once in this wise: — "I think nothing is to be hoped from you, if this bit of mould under your feet is not sweeter to you to eat than any other in this world, or in any world."
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson in "Thoreau" in The Atlantic Monthly (August 1862)

• Whilst he used in his writings a certain petulance of remark in reference to churches or churchmen, he was a person of a rare, tender, and absolute religion, a person incapable of any profanation, by act or by thought. Of course, the same isolation which belonged to his original thinking and living detached him from the social religious forms. This is neither to be censured nor regretted. Aristotle long ago explained it, when he said, "One who surpasses his fellow-citizens in virtue is no longer a part of the city. Their law is not for him, since he is a law to himself."
  Thoreau was sincerity itself, and might fortify the convictions of prophets in the ethical laws by his holy living. It was an affirmative experience which refused to be set aside. A truth-speaker he, capable of the most deep and strict conversation; a physician to the wounds of any soul; a friend, knowing not only the secret of friendship, but almost worshipped by those few persons who resorted to him as their confessor and prophet, and knew the deep value of his mind and great heart. He thought that without religion or devotion of some kind nothing great was ever accomplished: and he thought that the bigoted sectarian had better bear this in mind.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson in "Thoreau" in The Atlantic Monthly (August 1862)

• In reading Henry Thoreau's Journal, I am very sensible of the vigor of his constitution. That oaken strength which I noted whenever he walked or worked or surveyed wood lots, the same unhesitating hand with which a field-laborer accosts a piece of work which I should shun as a waste of strength, Henry shows in his literary task. He has muscle, & ventures on & performs tasks which I am forced to decline. In reading him, I find the same thoughts, the same spirit that is in me, but he takes a step beyond, & illustrates by excellent images that which I should have conveyed in a sleepy generality. 'Tis as if I went into a gymnasium, & saw youths leap, climb, & swing with a force unapproachable, — though their feats are only continuations of my initial grapplings & jumps.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson in his journal (24 June 1863)

• Truly, Nature absorbed his attention, but I don't think he cared much for what is called the beauties of nature; it was her way of working, her mystery, her economy in extravagance; he delighted to trace her footsteps toward their source .... He liked to feel that the pursuit was endless, with mystery at both ends of it ....
  • Julian Hawthorne in The Memoirs of Julian Hawthorne (1938)

• He is a singular character — a young man with much of wild original nature still remaining in him; and so far as he is sophisticated, it is in a way and method of his own. He is as ugly as sin, long-nosed, queer-mouthed, and with uncouth and rustic, though courteous manners, corresponding very well with such an exterior. But his ugliness is of an honest and agreeable fashion, and becomes him much better than beauty. He was educated, I believe, at Cambridge, and formerly kept school in this town; but for two or three years back, he has repudiated all regular modes of getting a living, and seems inclined to lead a sort of Indian life among civilized men — an Indian life, I mean, as respects the absence of any systematic effort for a livelihood. ... Mr. Thoreau is a keen and delicate observer of nature — a genuine observer — which, I suspect, is almost as rare a character as even an original poet; and Nature, in return for his love, seems to adopt him as her especial child, and shows him secrets which few others are allowed to witness.
  • Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his Journal entry for (1 September 1842)

• Among American writers Thoreau was the pioneer of nature-study. Audubon had preceded him but he worked mainly with the brush; to multitudes Thoreau opened the gate to the secrets of our natural environment. The subtle delicacy of the grass-blade, the crystals of the snowflake, the icicle, the marvel of the weird lines traced by the flocks of wild geese athwart the heavens as they migrated, these he watched and recorded with loving accuracy and sensitive poetic feeling as no one in our land before had done. I have thrown a stone upon the cairn at Walden Pond which has now grown so high through the tributes of his grateful admirers. I shall throw still others in grateful admiration if the opportunity comes to me.
  • James Kendall Hosmer in The Last Leaf : Observations, during Seventy-five Years, of Men and Events in America and Europe (1912), Ch. 8 "Poets and Prophets"

• Thoreau’s thin, penetrating, big-nosed face, even in a bad woodcut, conveys some hint of the limitations of his mind and character. With his almost acid sharpness of insight, with his almost animal dexterity in act, there went none of that large, unconscious geniality of the world’s heroes. He was not easy, not ample, not urbane, not even kind; his enjoyment was hardly smiling, or the smile was not broad enough to be convincing; he had no waste lands nor kitchen-midden in his nature, but was all improved and sharpened to a point. "He was bred to no profession," says Emerson; "he never married; he lived alone; he never went to church; he never voted; he refused to pay a tax to the State; he ate no flesh, he drank no wine, he never knew the use of tobacco and, though a naturalist, he used neither trap nor gun. When asked at dinner what dish he preferred, he answered, 'the nearest.'" So many negative superiorities begin to smack a little of the prig. From his later works he was in the habit of cutting out the humorous passages, under the impression that they were beneath the dignity of his moral muse; and there we see the prig stand public and confessed.
  • Robert Louis Stevenson in "Henry David Thoreau: His Character and Opinions", Cornhill Magazine (June 1880)

• A man who must separate himself from his neighbours' habits in order to be happy, is in much the same case with one who requires to take opium for the same purpose. What we want to see is one who can breast into the world, do a man's work, and still preserve his first and pure enjoyment of existence.
  • Robert Louis Stevenson in "Henry David Thoreau: His Character and Opinions", Cornhill Magazine (June 1880)

• He sounds, as it were, the fatal bottom of our organic existence, and yet claims not merely to accept the universe, as another Transcendentalist, Margaret Fuller, put it, but to rejoice in it. ... To the dark immensity of material Nature's indifference we can oppose only the brief light, like a lamp in a cabin, of our consciousness; the invigorating benison of Walden is to make us feel that the contest is equal, and fair. It has emerged over time as one of the great testaments of American individualism, assuring the New World, traditional reassurances failing, of the value, power, and beauty of the unfettered self.
  • John Updike, in "A Sage for All Seasons" in The Guardian (26 June 2004)

[edit] External links

Wikipedia has an article about:

Henry David Thoreau

Wikisource has original works written by or about:

Henry David Thoreau

• Henry D. Thoreau Quotations Page (Thoreau's Life & Writings at the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods
• The Thoreau Reader
• Henry David Thoreau at Transcendentalists.com
• Poetry of Thoreau
• "A Sage for All Seasons" by John Updike in The Guardian (26 June 2004)

Online texts at Wikisource:

• Autumnal Tints
• Life Without Principle
• Night and Moonlight
• Civil Disobedience
• The Highland Light
• The Landlord
• Walking

Online texts at Project Gutenberg:

• A Plea for Captain John Brown
• A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
• Walden
• Walking
• Wild Apples: The History of the Apple Tree