### ANOTHER WORD ON THOREAU by John Burroughs > The two race strains that met in Thoreau, the Scottish and the French, come out strongly in his life and character. To the French he owes his vivacity, his lucidity, his sense of style, and his passion for the wild; for the French, with all their urbanity and love of art, turn to nature very easily. To the Scot he is indebted more for his character than for his intellect. From this source come his contrariness, his combativeness, his grudging acquiescence, and his pronounced mysticism. Thence also comes his genius for solitude. ([Location 63107](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63107)) > > No matter how much Thoreau abjured our civilization, he certainly made good use of the weapons it gave him. No matter whose lands he squatted on, or whose saw he borrowed, or to whom or what he was indebted for the tools and utensils that made his life at Walden possible, — these things were the mere accidents of his environment, — he left a record of his life and thoughts there which is a precious heritage to his countrymen. ([Location 63161](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63161)) > > He found that to maintain one’s self on this earth is not a hardship, but a pastime, if one will live simply and wisely. ([Location 63169](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63169)) > > With all his asceticism and his idealism, he was not troubled at all with those things in Whitman that are a stumbling-block to so many persons. ([Location 63189](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63189)) > > He was a critic of life, he was a literary force that made for plain living and high thinking. ([Location 63196](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63196)) > > everything, and that "though you trade in messages from heaven, the whole curse of trade attaches to the business." The nearest his conscience would allow him to approach any kind of trade was to offer himself to his townsmen as a land-surveyor. ([Location 63213](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63213)) > > Thoreau was not a great philosopher, he was not a great naturalist, he was not a great poet, but as a nature-writer and an original character he is unique in our literature. ([Location 63287](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63287)) > > As a person he gave himself to others reluctantly; he was, in truth, a recluse. He stood for character more than for intellect, and for intuition more than for reason. He was often contrary and inconsistent. There was more crust than crumb in the loaf he gave us. ([Location 63293](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63293)) > > his diatribe against the lumbermen in the Maine woods: "The pine is no more lumber than man is; and to be made into boards and houses no more its true and highest use than the truest use of man is to be cut down and made into manure." ([Location 63336](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63336)) > > With his usual love of paradox Thoreau says that the fastest way to travel is to go afoot, because, one may add, the walker is constantly arriving at his destination; all places are alike to him, his harvest grows all along the road and beside every path, in every field and wood and on every hilltop. ([Location 63387](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63387)) > > The average walker is out for exercise and the exhilarations of the road, he reaps health and strength; but Thoreau evidently impaired his health by his needless exposure and inadequate food. He was a Holy-Lander who falls and dies in the Holy Land. He ridiculed walking for exercise — taking a walk as the sick take medicine; the walk itself was to be the "enterprise and adventure of the day." And "you must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast which ruminates while walking." ([Location 63417](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63417)) > > Thoreau was not a born naturalist, but a born supernaturalist. ([Location 63440](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63440)) > > How he could be aware that he was standing at the foot of one leg of the glowing arch is to me a mystery. When I see a rainbow, it is always immediately in front of me. I am standing exactly between the highest point of the arch and the sun, and the laws of optics ordain that it can be seen in no other way. You can never see a rainbow at an angle. It always faces you squarely. Hence no two persons see exactly the same bow, because no two persons can occupy exactly the same place at the same time. ([Location 63472](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63472)) > > Observers standing on high mountains with the sun low in the west have seen the bow as a complete circle. This one can understand. ([Location 63479](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63479)) > > Channing quotes him as saying that sometimes "you must see with the inside of your eye." I think that Thoreau saw, or tried to see, with the inside of his eye too often. He does not always see correctly, and many times he sees more of Thoreau than he does of the nature he assumes to be looking at. ([Location 63481](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63481)) > > But this is Thoreau — inspired with the heavenly elixir one moment, and drunk with the brew in his own cellar the next. ([Location 63511](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63511)) > > Emerson hit upon one of them when he said, "The trick of his rhetoric is soon learned; it consists in substituting for the obvious word and thought, its diametrical antagonist." ([Location 63513](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63513)) > > One frequently comes upon such sentences as these: "If I were sadder, I should be happier"; "The longer I have forgotten you, the more I remember you." It may give a moment’s pleasure when a writer takes two opposites and rubs their ears together in that way, but one may easily get too much of it. Words really mean nothing when used in such a manner. ([Location 63516](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63516)) > > Thoreau advised one of his correspondents when he made garden to plant some Giant Regrets — they were good for sauce. It is certain that he himself planted some Giant Exaggerations and had a good yield. His exaggeration was deliberate. "Walden" is from first to last a most delightful sample of his talent. ([Location 63527](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63527)) > > One of his tricks of self-justification was to compare himself with inanimate objects, which is usually as inept as to compare colors with sounds or perfumes: ([Location 63547](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63547)) > > If he sees anything unusual in nature, like galls on trees and plants, he must needs draw some moral from it, usually at the expense of the truth. For instance, he implies that the beauty of the oak galls is something that was meant to bloom in the flower, that the galls are the scarlet sins of the tree, the tree’s Ode to Dejection, … insect gives the magical touch that transforms the leaf into a nursery for its young. ([Location 63556](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63556)) > > It seems as though a man who keeps a Journal soon becomes its victim; at least that seems to have been the case with Thoreau. He lived for that Journal, he read for it, he walked for it; it was like a hungry, omnivorous monster that constantly called for more. He transcribed to its pages from the books he read, he filled it with interminable accounts of the commonplace things he saw in his walks, tedious and minute descriptions of everything in wood, field, and swamp. There are whole pages of the Latin names of the common weeds and flowers. Often he could not wait till he got home to write out his notes. He walked by day and night, in cold and heat, in storm and sunshine, all for his Journal. ([Location 63577](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63577)) > > For upwards of twenty-five years Thoreau seemed to have lived for this Journal. It swelled to many volumes. It is a drag-net that nothing escapes…. The vast mass of the matter is merely negative, like the things that we disregard in our walk. ([Location 63583](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63583)) > > an abnormal craving for exact but useless facts. ([Location 63628](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63628)) > > That Journal shall not go hungry, even if there is nothing to give it but the dry material of a bird’s nest. ([Location 63631](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63631)) > > One must regard him, not as a great thinker, nor as a disinterested seeker after the truth, but as a master in the art of vigorous and picturesque expression. ([Location 63636](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63636)) > > Thoreau compares himself to the bee that goes forth in quest of honey for the hive: … He apparently did not know that the bee does not get honey nor wax directly from the flowers, but only nectar, or sweet water. The bee, as I have often said, makes the honey and the wax after she gets home to the swarm. ([Location 63649](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63649)) > > His friend Alcott says he was deficient in the human sentiments. ([Location 63669](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63669)) > > Thoreau in his Journal concerning Emerson: "Talked, or tried to talk, with R. W. E. Lost my time — nay, almost my identity. He, assuming a false opposition where there was no difference of opinion, talked to the wind — told me what I knew — and I lost my time trying to imagine myself somebody else to oppose him." ([Location 63678](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63678)) > > Emerson was as slow to recognize his own thoughts when Alcott and Channing aired them before him as he was to recognize his own calf. ([Location 63683](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63683)) > > but now and then he would lay down his ruler on the map, draw a straight line to the point he proposed to visit, and follow that, going through the meadows and gardens and door-yards of the owners of the property in his line of march. There is a tradition that he and Channing once went through a house where the front and back door stood open. ([Location 63710](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63710)) > > his mental flights and excursions he follows this plan almost entirely; the hard facts and experiences of life trouble him very little. He can always ignore them or sail serenely above them. ([Location 63713](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63713)) > > In his paper called "Life without Principle," his radical idealism comes out: To work for money, or for subsistence alone, is life without principle. A man must work for the love of the work. ([Location 63722](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63722)) > > There has been but one Thoreau, and we should devoutly thank the gods of New England for the precious gift. ([Location 63815](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63815)) #thoreau_class