# Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau  ## Metadata - Author:: [[Henry David Thoreau]] - Full Title:: Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau - Category: #books ## Highlights #### WALDEN, OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS > The book compresses the time into a single calendar year and uses passages of four seasons to symbolise various steps in human development and experience. ([Location 5557](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=5557)) #### Economy > I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again. ([Location 5608](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=5608)) > I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. ([Location 5615](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=5615)) > There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, ([Location 6631](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=6631)) > You boast of spending a tenth part of your income in charity; maybe you should spend the nine tenths so, and done with it. Society recovers only a tenth part of the property then. Is this owing to the generosity of him in whose possession it is found, or to the remissness of the officers of justice? ([Location 6634](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=6634)) #### Where I Lived, and What I Lived For #### Reading #### Sounds #### Solitude #### Visitors #### The Bean-Field #### The Village #### The Ponds #### Baker Farm #### Higher Laws #### Brute Neighbors #### House-Warming #### Former Inhabitants and Winter Visitors #### Winter Animals #### The Pond in Winter #### Spring #### Conclusion ### ON THE DUTY OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE > I heartily accept the motto, “That government is best which governs least”; ... “That government is best which governs not at all”; ([Location 22318](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22318)) > Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. ([Location 22320](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22320)) > The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it. ([Location 22323](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22323)) > It is a sort of wooden gun to the people themselves. ([Location 22327](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22327)) > It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate. ([Location 22331](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22331)) > For government is an expedient, by which men would fain succeed in letting one another alone; ([Location 22333](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22333)) > I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. ([Location 22338](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22338)) > is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. ([Location 22345](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22345)) > It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. ([Location 22346](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22346)) > bodies. ([Location 22358](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22358)) > heads; ([Location 22362](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22362)) > 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 as enemies by it. ([Location 22363](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22363)) > I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the slave’s government also. ([Location 22371](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22371)) > machines have their friction; and possibly this does enough good to counter-balance the evil. ([Location 22375](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22375)) > In other words, 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. ([Location 22377](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22377)) > This people must cease to hold slaves, and to make war on Mexico, though it cost them their existence as a people. ([Location 22389](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22389)) > opponents to a reform in Massachusetts are not a hundred thousand politicians at the South, but a hundred thousand merchants and farmers here, who are more interested in commerce and agriculture than they are in humanity, and are not prepared to do justice to the slave and to Mexico, cost what it may. ([Location 22393](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22393)) > because the few are not as materially wiser or better than the many. ([Location 22397](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22397)) > What is the price-current of an honest man and patriot today? They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect. ([Location 22402](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22402)) > There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous ([Location 22404](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22404)) > Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. ([Location 22409](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22409)) > If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man’s shoulders. ([Location 22429](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22429)) > I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too. ([Location 22430](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22430)) > Thus, under the name of Order and Civil Government, we are all made at last to pay homage to and support our own meanness. ([Location 22436](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22436)) > Why do they not dissolve it themselves — the union between themselves and the State — and refuse to pay their quota into its treasury? ([Location 22441](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22441)) ### HENRY DAVID THOREAU: HIS CHARACTER AND OPINIONS by Robert Louis Stevenson > 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. ([Location 61645](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61645)) > “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.’” ([Location 61649](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61649)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > He was no ascetic, rather an Epicurean of the nobler sort; and he had this one great merit, that he succeeded so far as to be happy. “I love my fate to the core and rind,” he wrote once; ([Location 61660](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61660)) > Thoreau was a skulker. He did not wish virtue to go out of him among his fellow-men, but slunk into a corner to hoard it for himself. ([Location 61668](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61668)) - Note: Scrooge > Shakespeare, we can imagine, might begin the day upon a quart of ale, and yet enjoy the sunrise to the full as much as Thoreau, and commemorate his enjoyment in vastly better verses. ([Location 61677](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61677)) > 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. ([Location 61678](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61678)) > Thoreau loved to put it, Apollo must serve Admetus. This was to Thoreau even a sourer necessity than it is to most; there was a love of freedom, a strain of the wild man, in his nature, that rebelled with violence against the yoke of custom; and he was so eager to cultivate himself and to be happy in his own society, that he could consent with difficulty even to the interruptions of friendship. ([Location 61701](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61701)) - Note: Apollo sentenced to a year of servitude to a mortal for killing someone. Sent to serve Admentus. > Marcus Aurelius found time to study virtue, and between whiles to conduct the imperial affairs of Rome; but Thoreau is so busy improving himself that he must think twice about a morning call. ([Location 61704](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61704)) > For when a thing has once been done as well as it wants to be, it is of no further interest to the self-improver. ([Location 61709](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61709)) > As I did not teach for the benefit of my fellow-men, but simply for a livelihood, this was a failure. ([Location 61714](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61714)) > I have tried trade, but I found that it would take ten years to get under way in that, and that then I should probably be on my way to the devil.” ([Location 61715](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61715)) > He saw his way to get his board and lodging for practically nothing; and Admetus never got less work out of any servant since the world began. ([Location 61722](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61722)) > “The cost of a thing,” says he, “is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.” ([Location 61731](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61731)) > Prudence, which bids us all go to the ant for wisdom and hoard against the day of sickness, was not a favourite with Thoreau. ([Location 61752](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61752)) > When he had secured the necessaries of the moment, he would not reckon up possible accidents or torment himself with trouble for the future. ([Location 61753](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61753)) > He had no toleration for the man “who ventures to live only by the aid of the mutual insurance company, which has promised to bury him decently.” ([Location 61754](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61754)) > In , twenty-eight years old, an age by which the liveliest have usually declined into some conformity with the world, Thoreau, with a capital of something less than five pounds and a borrowed axe, walked forth into the woods by Walden Pond, and began his new experiment in life. ([Location 61761](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61761)) > for the matter of six weeks in the summer he worked at surveying, carpentry, or some other of his numerous dexterities, for hire. ([Location 61764](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61764)) > For more than five years this was all that he required to do for his support, and he had the winter and most of the summer at his entire disposal. ([Location 61765](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61765)) > It is not his frugality which is worthy of note; for, to begin with, that was inborn, and therefore inimitable by others who are differently constituted; and again, it was no new thing, but has often been equalled by poor Scotch students at the universities. ([Location 61774](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61774)) > when your toil has been a pleasure, you have not, as Thoreau says, “earned money merely,” but money, health, delight, and moral profit, all in one. ([Location 61801](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61801)) > Now Thoreau’s art was literature; and it was one of which he had conceived most ambitiously. He loved and believed in good books. ([Location 61815](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61815)) > “The heroic books,” he says, “even if printed in the character of our mother-tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; ([Location 61819](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61819)) > will find his work cut out for him. Thoreau composed seemingly while he walked, or at least exercise and composition were with him intimately connected; for we are told that “the length of his walk uniformly made the length of his writing.” ([Location 61830](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61830)) > Thus Thoreau was an exaggerative and a parabolical writer, not because he loved the literature of the East, but from a desire that people should understand 5 and realise what he was writing. ([Location 61847](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61847)) > To hear a strain of music, to see a beautiful woman, a river, a great city, or a starry night, is to make a man despair of his Lilliputian arts in language. ([Location 61850](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61850)) > Thoreau’s true subject was the pursuit of self-improvement combined with an unfriendly criticism of life as it goes on in our societies; ([Location 61856](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61856)) > Now Thoreau could not clothe his opinions in the garment of art, for that was not his talent; but he sought to gain the same elbow-room for himself, and to afford a similar relief to his readers, by mingling his thoughts with a record of experience. ([Location 61865](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61865)) > He was not one of those authors who 8 have learned, in his own words, “to leave out their dulness.” He inflicts his full quantity upon the reader in such books as “Cape Cod,” or “The Yankee in Canada.” Of the latter he confessed that he had not managed to get much of himself into it. ([Location 61892](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61892)) > As to his poetry, Emerson’s word shall suffice for us, it is so accurate and so prettily said: “The thyme and marjoram are not yet honey.” ([Location 61898](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61898)) > “Only lovers know the value of truth.” And yet again: “They ask for words and deeds, when a true relation is word and deed.” ([Location 61926](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61926)) > It seemed to him, I think, that society is precisely the reverse of friendship, in that it takes place on a lower level than the characters of any of the parties would warrant us to expect. ([Location 61967](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61967)) > It is curious and in some ways dispiriting that a writer may be always best corrected out of his own mouth; and so, to conclude, here is another passage from Thoreau which seems aimed directly at himself: “Do not be too moral; you may cheat yourself out of much life so.... All fables, indeed, have their morals; but the innocent enjoy the story.” ([Location 61978](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61978)) > “The only obligation,” says he, “which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.” ([Location 61982](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61982)) > “The greater part of what my neighbours call good I believe in my soul to be bad.” ([Location 61985](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61985)) > There is a rude nobility, like that of a barbarian king, in this unshaken confidence in himself and indifference to the wants, thoughts, or sufferings of others. In his whole works I find no trace of pity. ([Location 61997](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61997)) > He could understand the idealism of the Christian view, but he was himself so unaffectedly unhuman that he did not recognise the human intention and essence of that teaching. ([Location 62004](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62004)) > Hence he complained that Christ did not leave us a rule that was proper and sufficient for this world, not having conceived the nature of the rule that was laid down; for things of that character that are sufficiently unacceptable become positively non-existent to the mind. ([Location 62005](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62005)) > Thoreau had plenty of humour until he tutored himself out of it, and so forfeited that best birthright of a sensible man; ([Location 62009](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62009)) > It was forced on him by his calm but radical opposition to negro slavery. “Voting for the right is doing nothing for it,” he saw; “it is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail.” ([Location 62024](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62024)) > “I do not hesitate to say,” he adds, “that those who call themselves Abolitionists should at once effectually withdraw their support, both in person and property, from the government of Massachusetts.” ([Location 62026](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62026)) > That is what he did: in  he ceased to pay the poll-tax. The highway-tax he paid, for he said he was as desirous to be a good neighbour as to be a bad subject; but no more poll-tax to the State of Massachusetts. ([Location 62028](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62028)) > “In fact, I quietly declare war with the State after my fashion, though I will still make what use and get what advantage of her I can, as is usual in such cases.” ([Location 62030](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62030)) > For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be; what is once well done is done for ever.” Such was his theory of civil disobedience. ([Location 62035](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62035)) > Not far from twenty years later, when Captain John Brown was taken at Harper’s Ferry, Thoreau was the first to come forward in his defence. ([Location 62044](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62044)) ### BROOK FARM AND CONCORD by Henry James > contrary, I find such an entry as this in the American Note-Books in 1841: “I was invited to dine at Mr. Bancroft’s yesterday, with Miss Margaret Fuller; but Providence had given me some business to do; for which I was very thankful!” ([Location 62096](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62096)) > It seems odd, as his biographer says, “that the least gregarious of men should have been drawn into a socialistic community;” but although it is apparent that Hawthorne went to Brook Farm without any great Transcendental fervour, yet he had various good reasons for casting his lot in this would-be happy family. He was as yet unable to marry, but he naturally wished to do so as speedily as possible, and there was a prospect that Brook Farm would prove an economical residence. ([Location 62119](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62119)) > And then it is only fair to believe that Hawthorne was interested in the experiment, and that though he was not a Transcendentalist, an Abolitionist, or a Fourierite, as his companions were in some degree or other likely to be, he was willing, as a generous and unoccupied young man, to lend a hand in any reasonable scheme for helping people to live together on better terms than the common. ([Location 62122](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62122)) > The Brook Farm scheme was, as such things go, a reasonable one; ([Location 62124](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62124)) - Note: Brook farm utopia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brook_Farm?wprov=sfti1 https://maps.apple.com/?ll=42.291361,-71.174086&q=Brook+Farm > The relations of the sexes were neither more nor less than what they usually are in American life, excellent; and in such particulars the scheme was thoroughly conservative and irreproachable. ([Location 62128](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62128)) > The Transcendentalists read a great deal of French and German, made themselves intimate with George Sand and Goethe, and many other writers; but the strong and deep New England conscience accompanied them on all their intellectual excursions, and ([Location 62136](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62136)) > Henry Thoreau was essentially a sylvan personage and would not have been, however the fashion of his time might have turned, a man about town. ([Location 62139](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62139)) > The situation was summed up and transfigured in the admirable and exquisite Emerson. ([Location 62159](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62159)) > compromising for the sake of being more comfortable. He urged that a man should await his call, his finding the thing to do which he should really believe in doing, and not be urged by the world’s opinion to do simply the world’s work. ([Location 62167](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62167)) > Hawthorne played socially in the little community at West Roxbury. His biographer describes him as sitting “silently, hour after hour, in the broad old-fashioned hall of the house, where he could listen almost unseen to the chat and merriment of the young people, himself almost always holding a book before him, but seldom turning the leaves.” ([Location 62193](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62193)) > Wordsworth’s “plain living and high thinking” were made actual. ([Location 62220](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62220)) > Brook Farm as an occasional visitor; not as a labourer in the Hive.) ([Location 62222](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62222)) > In the preface to the tales written at the Manse he talks of many things and just touches upon some of the members of his circle — especially upon that odd genius, his fellow-villager, Henry Thoreau. ([Location 62313](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62313)) > But any reference to it would be ungenerous which should omit to pay a tribute in passing to the author of Walden. Whatever question there may be of his talent, there can be none, I think, of his genius. It was a slim and crooked one; but it was eminently personal. He was imperfect, unfinished, inartistic; he was worse than provincial — he was parochial; it is only at his best that he is readable. But at his best he has an extreme natural charm, and he must always be mentioned after those Americans — Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Lowell, Motley — who have written originally. ([Location 62316](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62316)) > parti-pris ([Location 62383](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62383)) ### Extracts from AMERICAN NOTEBOOKS by Nathaniel Hawthorne > September 1, 1842. Mr. Thoreau dined with us yesterday. 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. ([Location 62414](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62414)) > life, I mean, as respects the absence of any systematic effort for a livelihood. He has been for some time an inmate of Mr. Emerson’s family; and, in requital, he labors in the garden, and performs such other offices as may suit him — being entertained by Mr. Emerson for the sake of what true manhood there is in him. ([Location 62419](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62419)) > Nevertheless he was desirous of selling the boat of which he is so fit a pilot, and which was built by his own hands; so I agreed to take it, and accordingly became possessor of the Musketaquid. I wish I could acquire the aquatic skill of the original owner. ([Location 62444](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62444)) ### THE FORESTER by Amos Bronson Alcott > Alcott’s ([Location 62449](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62449)) - Note: Father to Louisa may Alcott. Went to jail b4 Thoreau for nonpayment of taxes, giving HDT the idea in Civ Dis ### A FABLE FOR CRITICS by James Russell Lowell ### HENRY D. THOREAU by Elbert Hubbard ### HENRY THOREAU > Henry David Thoreau’s place in the common heart of humanity grows firmer and more secure as the seasons pass; his life proves for us again the paradoxical fact that the only men who really succeed are those who fail. ([Location 62561](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62561)) > Thoreau’s obscurity, his poverty, his lack of public recognition in life, either as a writer or lecturer, his rejection as a lover, his failure in business, and his early death, form a combination of calamities that make him as immortal as a martyr. ([Location 62563](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62563)) > Nature does not care for him — she produces a million beings in order to get one who has thoughts — all are swept into the dustpan of oblivion but the one who thinks; he alone lives, embalmed in the memories of generations unborn. ([Location 62570](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62570)) > One of the most insistent errors ever put out was that statement of Rousseau, paraphrased in part by T. Jefferson, that all men are born free and equal. No man was ever born free, and none are equal, and would not remain so an hour, even if Jove, through caprice, should make them so. ([Location 62572](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62572)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - Note: Equal before the law. Free, in one’s mind - stoicism, epicureanism > If any of the tribe of Thoreau gets into Elysium, it will be by tagging close to the only man among them who glorified his Maker by using his reason. ([Location 62576](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62576)) > Cambridge, fifteen miles away, and Harvard professors, for the most part, used the Concord article in jotting down their sublime thoughts. ([Location 62591](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62591)) > Henry was educated principally because he wasn’t very strong, nor was he on good terms with work, and these are classic reasons for imparting classical education to youth, aspiring or otherwise. ([Location 62594](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62594)) > Once safely through college, and standing on the threshold (I trust I use the right expression), Henry Thoreau refused to accept his diploma and pay five dollars for it — he said it wasn’t worth the money. ([Location 62602](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62602)) > The men who really launched him on his voyage of discovery were Ellery Channing and Ralph Waldo Emerson ([Location 62608](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62608)) > And as for his life in a shanty on the shores of Walden Pond, the occurrence is too commonplace to mention, were it not for the fact that the solitary occupant of the shanty was a Harvard graduate who used no tobacco. ([Location 62611](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62611)) > Instead, however, he settled down and made pencils just like his father used to make, and in the same way. ([Location 62638](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62638)) > Immanuel Kant has been called the father of modern Transcendentalists: but Socrates and his pupil Plato, so far as we know, were the first of the race. ([Location 62664](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62664)) > Neither buzzing bluebottles nor the fall of dynasties disturbed them. “The soul is everything,” said Plato. “The soul knows all things,” says Emerson. ([Location 62666](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62666)) > George Ripley, Bronson Alcott, and Ralph Waldo Emerson evolved New England Transcendentalism, and very early Henry Thoreau added a few bars of harmonious discords to the symphony. ([Location 62673](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62673)) > He used to run his wheelbarrow into Emerson’s garden and load it up with potatoes, cabbages or turnips, and once in response to a hint that the vegetables were private property, the old man somewhat petulantly exclaimed, “I need them! — I need them!” ([Location 62694](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62694)) > And the consistency of Alcott’s philosophy was shown in that he never took anything or any more than he needed, and if he had something that you needed, you were certainly welcome to it. ([Location 62697](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62697)) > Emerson and Thoreau helped themselves to Alcott’s ideas. ([Location 62698](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62698)) > Thoreau, at this time, was a member of Emerson’s household, and in a letter Emerson says, “He has his board for what labor he chooses to do; he is a great benefactor and physician to me, for he is an indefatigable and skilful laborer, besides being a scholar and a poet, and as full of promise as a young apple-tree.” ([Location 62720](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62720)) > Emerson, who called Thoreau “the young god Pan.” ([Location 62738](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62738)) > Thoreau served Hawthorne as a model for Donatello, the mysterious wood-sprite in the “Marble Faun.” ([Location 62739](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62739)) > Greeley had guessed the truth that the best city reporters are country boys. They observe and hear — all is curious and wonderful to them: by and by they will become blase — sophisticated — that is, blind and deaf. ([Location 62762](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62762)) - Note: Abandoned ladder syndrome > He was resolved to follow the example of Brook Farm, and start a community of his own in opposition. His community would be on the shores of Walden Pond, and the only member of the genus homo who would be eligible to membership would be himself; the other members would be the birds and squirrels and bees, and the trees would make up the rest. ([Location 62774](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62774)) > Thoreau’s retreat would be the same, with the disadvantage of personal contact eliminated. ([Location 62778](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62778)) > The cabin was twelve by fifteen, and cost — furnished — the sum of twenty-eight dollars, good money, not counting labor, which Thoreau did not calculate as worth anything, since he had had the fun of the thing — something for which men often pay high. ([Location 62783](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62783)) > Thoreau was an example of shanty-arrested development. ([Location 62790](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62790)) > Thoreau was no hermit — at least twice a week he would go to the village and meander along the street, gossiping with all or any. Often he would accept invitations to supper, but on principle refused all invitations to remain overnight, no matter what the weather. ([Location 62809](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62809)) > with unconscious humor calls home. Hawthorne hints that Thoreau was a delightful poseur — he posed so naturally that he deceived even himself. ([Location 62813](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62813)) > Thoreau argued the question at length, and among other things, said, “I will not give money to buy a musket, and hire a man to use this musket to shoot another.” And also, “The best government is not that which governs least, but that which governs not at all.” ([Location 62815](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62815)) > He went back to town and told the other officials what had happened. Their dignity was at stake. Alcott had been guilty of a like defiance some time before, and now it was the belief that he was putting the younger man up to insurrection. The next time Thoreau came over to the village for his mail he was arrested and lodged in the local bastile. ([Location 62820](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62820)) > Emerson, hearing of the trouble, hastened to the jail, and reaching the presence of the prisoner asked sternly, “Henry, why are you here?” And the answer was, “Waldo, why are you not here?” ([Location 62823](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62823)) > Thoreau’s cabin-life continued for two Summers and Winters. He had proved that two hours’ manual work each day was sufficient to keep a man — twenty cents a day would suffice. ([Location 62830](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62830)) > Lowell had made a few cutting remarks to the effect that “as compared with shanty-life, the tub of Diogenes was preferable, as it had a much sounder bottom,” and Hawthorne had written of “the beauties of conspicuous solitude.” ([Location 62833](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62833)) > The absence of social ties and of all responsibilities fixed in his peculiar temperament an indifference to hunger, heat, cold, wet, damp, and all bodily discomfort that classes the man with the flagellants. ([Location 62851](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62851)) > A few years of plum-cake, cold mince-pie and continual wet feet will put the petard under even the stoutest constitution. ([Location 62856](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62856)) > It is absurd for a man to make a god of his digestive apparatus, but it is just as bad to forget that the belly is as much the gift of God as the brain. ([Location 62859](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62859)) > The official organ of the transcendentalists, however, paid no honorariums — it was both sincere and serious, and died in due time of too much dignity. ([Location 62872](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62872)) > A lady once asked John Burroughs this question: “What would become of this world if everybody in it patterned after Henry Thoreau?” And Ol’ John replied, “It would be much improved.” ([Location 62901](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62901)) > But your Uncle John is a humorist — he knows that Henry Ward Beecher was right when he said, “God never made but one Thoreau — that was enough, but we are grateful for the one.” ([Location 62903](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62903)) > At dinner once at a neighbor’s he was asked what dish he preferred, and his answer was, “The nearest.” ([Location 62909](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62909)) ### THOREAU by Virginia Woolf > thanks to a secret of his own for mixing levigated plumbago with fuller’s earth and water, rolling it into sheets, cutting it into strips, and burning it. ([Location 62974](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62974)) > co-operative community, such as Brook Farm; the other in solitude with nature. ... ‘As for the communities,’ he wrote in his journal, ‘I think I had rather keep bachelor’s quarters in hell than go to board in heaven.’ ([Location 63011](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63011)) > He did everything he could to intensify his own understanding of himself, to foster whatever was peculiar, to isolate himself from contact with any force that might interfere with his immensely valuable gift of personality. ([Location 63023](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63023)) > simplicity? Is Thoreau’s simplicity simplicity for its own sake, and not rather a method of intensification, a way of setting free the delicate and complicated machinery of the soul, so that its results are the reverse of simple? ([Location 63032](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63032)) > The most remarkable men tend to discard luxury because they find that it hampers the play of what is much more valuable to them. ([Location 63034](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63034)) > And yet this egoist was the man who sheltered runaway slaves in his hut; this hermit was the first man to speak out in public in defence of John Brown; this self-centred solitary could neither sleep nor think when Brown lay in prison. ([Location 63057](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63057)) > He is never speaking directly to us; he is speaking partly to himself and partly to something mystic beyond our sight. ‘Says I to myself,’ he writes, ‘should be the motto to my journal’, and all his books are journals. ([Location 63067](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63067)) > ‘It appears to be a law,’ he says, ‘that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature. Those qualities which bring you near to the one estrange you from the other.’ ([Location 63076](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63076)) > ‘I am enjoying existence as much as ever,’ he wrote from his deathbed, ‘and regret nothing.’ He was talking to himself of moose and Indian when, without a struggle, he died. ([Location 63094](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63094)) ### 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)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > 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)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > 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)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > 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: BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH by Ralph Waldo Emerson > But he replied, that he should never make another pencil. “Why should I? I would not do again what I have done once.” ([Location 63834](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63834)) > With his hardy habits and few wants, his skill in wood-craft, and his powerful arithmetic, he was very competent to live in any part of the world. ([Location 63844](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63844)) > He was bred to no profession; 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. He chose, wisely, no doubt, for himself, to be the bachelor of thought and Nature. He had no talent for wealth, and knew how to be poor without the least hint of squalor or inelegance. ([Location 63854](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63854)) > “In every part of Great Britain,” he wrote in his diary, “are discovered traces of the Romans, their funereal urns, their camps, their roads, their dwellings. But New England, at least, is not based on any Roman ruins. We have not to lay the foundations of our houses on the ashes of a former civilization.” ([Location 63905](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63905)) > Before the first friendly word had been spoken for Captain John Brown, after the arrest, he sent notices to most houses in Concord, that he would speak in a public hall on the condition and character of John Brown, on Sunday evening, and invited all people to come. The Republican Committee, the Abolitionist Committee, sent him word that it was premature and not advisable. He replied,— “I did not send to you for advice, but to announce that I am to speak.” ([Location 63911](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63911)) > He drew out of his breast-pocket his diary, and read the names of all the plants that should bloom on this day, whereof he kept account as a banker when his notes fall due. ([Location 63997](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63997)) - Note: Jeffersonian note taker > His own verses are often rude and defective. The gold does not yet run pure, is drossy and crude. The thyme and marjoram are not yet honey. ([Location 64044](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=64044)) > 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.” ([Location 64067](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=64067)) > “Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.” ([Location 64109](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=64109)) - Note: Holmes noble bachelor # Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau  ## Metadata - Author:: [[Henry David Thoreau]] - Full Title:: Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau - Category: #books ## Highlights #### WALDEN, OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS > The book compresses the time into a single calendar year and uses passages of four seasons to symbolise various steps in human development and experience. ([Location 5557](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=5557)) #### Economy > I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again. ([Location 5608](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=5608)) > I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. ([Location 5615](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=5615)) > There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, ([Location 6631](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=6631)) > You boast of spending a tenth part of your income in charity; maybe you should spend the nine tenths so, and done with it. Society recovers only a tenth part of the property then. Is this owing to the generosity of him in whose possession it is found, or to the remissness of the officers of justice? ([Location 6634](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=6634)) #### Where I Lived, and What I Lived For #### Reading #### Sounds #### Solitude #### Visitors #### The Bean-Field #### The Village #### The Ponds #### Baker Farm #### Higher Laws #### Brute Neighbors #### House-Warming #### Former Inhabitants and Winter Visitors #### Winter Animals #### The Pond in Winter #### Spring #### Conclusion ### ON THE DUTY OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE > I heartily accept the motto, “That government is best which governs least”; ... “That government is best which governs not at all”; ([Location 22318](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22318)) > Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. ([Location 22320](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22320)) > The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it. ([Location 22323](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22323)) > It is a sort of wooden gun to the people themselves. ([Location 22327](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22327)) > It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate. ([Location 22331](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22331)) > For government is an expedient, by which men would fain succeed in letting one another alone; ([Location 22333](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22333)) > I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. ([Location 22338](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22338)) > is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. ([Location 22345](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22345)) > It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. ([Location 22346](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22346)) > bodies. ([Location 22358](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22358)) > heads; ([Location 22362](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22362)) > 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 as enemies by it. ([Location 22363](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22363)) > I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the slave’s government also. ([Location 22371](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22371)) > machines have their friction; and possibly this does enough good to counter-balance the evil. ([Location 22375](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22375)) > In other words, 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. ([Location 22377](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22377)) > This people must cease to hold slaves, and to make war on Mexico, though it cost them their existence as a people. ([Location 22389](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22389)) > opponents to a reform in Massachusetts are not a hundred thousand politicians at the South, but a hundred thousand merchants and farmers here, who are more interested in commerce and agriculture than they are in humanity, and are not prepared to do justice to the slave and to Mexico, cost what it may. ([Location 22393](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22393)) > because the few are not as materially wiser or better than the many. ([Location 22397](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22397)) > What is the price-current of an honest man and patriot today? They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect. ([Location 22402](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22402)) > There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous ([Location 22404](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22404)) > Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. ([Location 22409](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22409)) > If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man’s shoulders. ([Location 22429](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22429)) > I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too. ([Location 22430](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22430)) > Thus, under the name of Order and Civil Government, we are all made at last to pay homage to and support our own meanness. ([Location 22436](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22436)) > Why do they not dissolve it themselves — the union between themselves and the State — and refuse to pay their quota into its treasury? ([Location 22441](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=22441)) ### HENRY DAVID THOREAU: HIS CHARACTER AND OPINIONS by Robert Louis Stevenson > 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. ([Location 61645](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61645)) > “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.’” ([Location 61649](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61649)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > He was no ascetic, rather an Epicurean of the nobler sort; and he had this one great merit, that he succeeded so far as to be happy. “I love my fate to the core and rind,” he wrote once; ([Location 61660](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61660)) > Thoreau was a skulker. He did not wish virtue to go out of him among his fellow-men, but slunk into a corner to hoard it for himself. ([Location 61668](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61668)) - Note: Scrooge > Shakespeare, we can imagine, might begin the day upon a quart of ale, and yet enjoy the sunrise to the full as much as Thoreau, and commemorate his enjoyment in vastly better verses. ([Location 61677](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61677)) > 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. ([Location 61678](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61678)) > Thoreau loved to put it, Apollo must serve Admetus. This was to Thoreau even a sourer necessity than it is to most; there was a love of freedom, a strain of the wild man, in his nature, that rebelled with violence against the yoke of custom; and he was so eager to cultivate himself and to be happy in his own society, that he could consent with difficulty even to the interruptions of friendship. ([Location 61701](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61701)) - Note: Apollo sentenced to a year of servitude to a mortal for killing someone. Sent to serve Admentus. > Marcus Aurelius found time to study virtue, and between whiles to conduct the imperial affairs of Rome; but Thoreau is so busy improving himself that he must think twice about a morning call. ([Location 61704](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61704)) > For when a thing has once been done as well as it wants to be, it is of no further interest to the self-improver. ([Location 61709](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61709)) > As I did not teach for the benefit of my fellow-men, but simply for a livelihood, this was a failure. ([Location 61714](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61714)) > I have tried trade, but I found that it would take ten years to get under way in that, and that then I should probably be on my way to the devil.” ([Location 61715](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61715)) > He saw his way to get his board and lodging for practically nothing; and Admetus never got less work out of any servant since the world began. ([Location 61722](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61722)) > “The cost of a thing,” says he, “is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.” ([Location 61731](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61731)) > Prudence, which bids us all go to the ant for wisdom and hoard against the day of sickness, was not a favourite with Thoreau. ([Location 61752](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61752)) > When he had secured the necessaries of the moment, he would not reckon up possible accidents or torment himself with trouble for the future. ([Location 61753](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61753)) > He had no toleration for the man “who ventures to live only by the aid of the mutual insurance company, which has promised to bury him decently.” ([Location 61754](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61754)) > In , twenty-eight years old, an age by which the liveliest have usually declined into some conformity with the world, Thoreau, with a capital of something less than five pounds and a borrowed axe, walked forth into the woods by Walden Pond, and began his new experiment in life. ([Location 61761](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61761)) > for the matter of six weeks in the summer he worked at surveying, carpentry, or some other of his numerous dexterities, for hire. ([Location 61764](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61764)) > For more than five years this was all that he required to do for his support, and he had the winter and most of the summer at his entire disposal. ([Location 61765](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61765)) > It is not his frugality which is worthy of note; for, to begin with, that was inborn, and therefore inimitable by others who are differently constituted; and again, it was no new thing, but has often been equalled by poor Scotch students at the universities. ([Location 61774](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61774)) > when your toil has been a pleasure, you have not, as Thoreau says, “earned money merely,” but money, health, delight, and moral profit, all in one. ([Location 61801](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61801)) > Now Thoreau’s art was literature; and it was one of which he had conceived most ambitiously. He loved and believed in good books. ([Location 61815](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61815)) > “The heroic books,” he says, “even if printed in the character of our mother-tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; ([Location 61819](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61819)) > will find his work cut out for him. Thoreau composed seemingly while he walked, or at least exercise and composition were with him intimately connected; for we are told that “the length of his walk uniformly made the length of his writing.” ([Location 61830](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61830)) > Thus Thoreau was an exaggerative and a parabolical writer, not because he loved the literature of the East, but from a desire that people should understand 5 and realise what he was writing. ([Location 61847](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61847)) > To hear a strain of music, to see a beautiful woman, a river, a great city, or a starry night, is to make a man despair of his Lilliputian arts in language. ([Location 61850](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61850)) > Thoreau’s true subject was the pursuit of self-improvement combined with an unfriendly criticism of life as it goes on in our societies; ([Location 61856](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61856)) > Now Thoreau could not clothe his opinions in the garment of art, for that was not his talent; but he sought to gain the same elbow-room for himself, and to afford a similar relief to his readers, by mingling his thoughts with a record of experience. ([Location 61865](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61865)) > He was not one of those authors who 8 have learned, in his own words, “to leave out their dulness.” He inflicts his full quantity upon the reader in such books as “Cape Cod,” or “The Yankee in Canada.” Of the latter he confessed that he had not managed to get much of himself into it. ([Location 61892](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61892)) > As to his poetry, Emerson’s word shall suffice for us, it is so accurate and so prettily said: “The thyme and marjoram are not yet honey.” ([Location 61898](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61898)) > “Only lovers know the value of truth.” And yet again: “They ask for words and deeds, when a true relation is word and deed.” ([Location 61926](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61926)) > It seemed to him, I think, that society is precisely the reverse of friendship, in that it takes place on a lower level than the characters of any of the parties would warrant us to expect. ([Location 61967](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61967)) > It is curious and in some ways dispiriting that a writer may be always best corrected out of his own mouth; and so, to conclude, here is another passage from Thoreau which seems aimed directly at himself: “Do not be too moral; you may cheat yourself out of much life so.... All fables, indeed, have their morals; but the innocent enjoy the story.” ([Location 61978](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61978)) > “The only obligation,” says he, “which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.” ([Location 61982](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61982)) > “The greater part of what my neighbours call good I believe in my soul to be bad.” ([Location 61985](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61985)) > There is a rude nobility, like that of a barbarian king, in this unshaken confidence in himself and indifference to the wants, thoughts, or sufferings of others. In his whole works I find no trace of pity. ([Location 61997](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=61997)) > He could understand the idealism of the Christian view, but he was himself so unaffectedly unhuman that he did not recognise the human intention and essence of that teaching. ([Location 62004](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62004)) > Hence he complained that Christ did not leave us a rule that was proper and sufficient for this world, not having conceived the nature of the rule that was laid down; for things of that character that are sufficiently unacceptable become positively non-existent to the mind. ([Location 62005](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62005)) > Thoreau had plenty of humour until he tutored himself out of it, and so forfeited that best birthright of a sensible man; ([Location 62009](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62009)) > It was forced on him by his calm but radical opposition to negro slavery. “Voting for the right is doing nothing for it,” he saw; “it is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail.” ([Location 62024](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62024)) > “I do not hesitate to say,” he adds, “that those who call themselves Abolitionists should at once effectually withdraw their support, both in person and property, from the government of Massachusetts.” ([Location 62026](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62026)) > That is what he did: in  he ceased to pay the poll-tax. The highway-tax he paid, for he said he was as desirous to be a good neighbour as to be a bad subject; but no more poll-tax to the State of Massachusetts. ([Location 62028](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62028)) > “In fact, I quietly declare war with the State after my fashion, though I will still make what use and get what advantage of her I can, as is usual in such cases.” ([Location 62030](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62030)) > For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be; what is once well done is done for ever.” Such was his theory of civil disobedience. ([Location 62035](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62035)) > Not far from twenty years later, when Captain John Brown was taken at Harper’s Ferry, Thoreau was the first to come forward in his defence. ([Location 62044](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62044)) ### BROOK FARM AND CONCORD by Henry James > contrary, I find such an entry as this in the American Note-Books in 1841: “I was invited to dine at Mr. Bancroft’s yesterday, with Miss Margaret Fuller; but Providence had given me some business to do; for which I was very thankful!” ([Location 62096](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62096)) > It seems odd, as his biographer says, “that the least gregarious of men should have been drawn into a socialistic community;” but although it is apparent that Hawthorne went to Brook Farm without any great Transcendental fervour, yet he had various good reasons for casting his lot in this would-be happy family. He was as yet unable to marry, but he naturally wished to do so as speedily as possible, and there was a prospect that Brook Farm would prove an economical residence. ([Location 62119](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62119)) > And then it is only fair to believe that Hawthorne was interested in the experiment, and that though he was not a Transcendentalist, an Abolitionist, or a Fourierite, as his companions were in some degree or other likely to be, he was willing, as a generous and unoccupied young man, to lend a hand in any reasonable scheme for helping people to live together on better terms than the common. ([Location 62122](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62122)) > The Brook Farm scheme was, as such things go, a reasonable one; ([Location 62124](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62124)) - Note: Brook farm utopia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brook_Farm?wprov=sfti1 https://maps.apple.com/?ll=42.291361,-71.174086&q=Brook+Farm > The relations of the sexes were neither more nor less than what they usually are in American life, excellent; and in such particulars the scheme was thoroughly conservative and irreproachable. ([Location 62128](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62128)) > The Transcendentalists read a great deal of French and German, made themselves intimate with George Sand and Goethe, and many other writers; but the strong and deep New England conscience accompanied them on all their intellectual excursions, and ([Location 62136](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62136)) > Henry Thoreau was essentially a sylvan personage and would not have been, however the fashion of his time might have turned, a man about town. ([Location 62139](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62139)) > The situation was summed up and transfigured in the admirable and exquisite Emerson. ([Location 62159](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62159)) > compromising for the sake of being more comfortable. He urged that a man should await his call, his finding the thing to do which he should really believe in doing, and not be urged by the world’s opinion to do simply the world’s work. ([Location 62167](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62167)) > Hawthorne played socially in the little community at West Roxbury. His biographer describes him as sitting “silently, hour after hour, in the broad old-fashioned hall of the house, where he could listen almost unseen to the chat and merriment of the young people, himself almost always holding a book before him, but seldom turning the leaves.” ([Location 62193](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62193)) > Wordsworth’s “plain living and high thinking” were made actual. ([Location 62220](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62220)) > Brook Farm as an occasional visitor; not as a labourer in the Hive.) ([Location 62222](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62222)) > In the preface to the tales written at the Manse he talks of many things and just touches upon some of the members of his circle — especially upon that odd genius, his fellow-villager, Henry Thoreau. ([Location 62313](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62313)) > But any reference to it would be ungenerous which should omit to pay a tribute in passing to the author of Walden. Whatever question there may be of his talent, there can be none, I think, of his genius. It was a slim and crooked one; but it was eminently personal. He was imperfect, unfinished, inartistic; he was worse than provincial — he was parochial; it is only at his best that he is readable. But at his best he has an extreme natural charm, and he must always be mentioned after those Americans — Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Lowell, Motley — who have written originally. ([Location 62316](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62316)) > parti-pris ([Location 62383](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62383)) ### Extracts from AMERICAN NOTEBOOKS by Nathaniel Hawthorne > September 1, 1842. Mr. Thoreau dined with us yesterday. 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. ([Location 62414](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62414)) > life, I mean, as respects the absence of any systematic effort for a livelihood. He has been for some time an inmate of Mr. Emerson’s family; and, in requital, he labors in the garden, and performs such other offices as may suit him — being entertained by Mr. Emerson for the sake of what true manhood there is in him. ([Location 62419](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62419)) > Nevertheless he was desirous of selling the boat of which he is so fit a pilot, and which was built by his own hands; so I agreed to take it, and accordingly became possessor of the Musketaquid. I wish I could acquire the aquatic skill of the original owner. ([Location 62444](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62444)) ### THE FORESTER by Amos Bronson Alcott > Alcott’s ([Location 62449](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62449)) - Note: Father to Louisa may Alcott. Went to jail b4 Thoreau for nonpayment of taxes, giving HDT the idea in Civ Dis ### A FABLE FOR CRITICS by James Russell Lowell ### HENRY D. THOREAU by Elbert Hubbard ### HENRY THOREAU > Henry David Thoreau’s place in the common heart of humanity grows firmer and more secure as the seasons pass; his life proves for us again the paradoxical fact that the only men who really succeed are those who fail. ([Location 62561](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62561)) > Thoreau’s obscurity, his poverty, his lack of public recognition in life, either as a writer or lecturer, his rejection as a lover, his failure in business, and his early death, form a combination of calamities that make him as immortal as a martyr. ([Location 62563](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62563)) > Nature does not care for him — she produces a million beings in order to get one who has thoughts — all are swept into the dustpan of oblivion but the one who thinks; he alone lives, embalmed in the memories of generations unborn. ([Location 62570](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62570)) > One of the most insistent errors ever put out was that statement of Rousseau, paraphrased in part by T. Jefferson, that all men are born free and equal. No man was ever born free, and none are equal, and would not remain so an hour, even if Jove, through caprice, should make them so. ([Location 62572](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62572)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - Note: Equal before the law. Free, in one’s mind - stoicism, epicureanism > If any of the tribe of Thoreau gets into Elysium, it will be by tagging close to the only man among them who glorified his Maker by using his reason. ([Location 62576](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62576)) > Cambridge, fifteen miles away, and Harvard professors, for the most part, used the Concord article in jotting down their sublime thoughts. ([Location 62591](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62591)) > Henry was educated principally because he wasn’t very strong, nor was he on good terms with work, and these are classic reasons for imparting classical education to youth, aspiring or otherwise. ([Location 62594](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62594)) > Once safely through college, and standing on the threshold (I trust I use the right expression), Henry Thoreau refused to accept his diploma and pay five dollars for it — he said it wasn’t worth the money. ([Location 62602](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62602)) > The men who really launched him on his voyage of discovery were Ellery Channing and Ralph Waldo Emerson ([Location 62608](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62608)) > And as for his life in a shanty on the shores of Walden Pond, the occurrence is too commonplace to mention, were it not for the fact that the solitary occupant of the shanty was a Harvard graduate who used no tobacco. ([Location 62611](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62611)) > Instead, however, he settled down and made pencils just like his father used to make, and in the same way. ([Location 62638](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62638)) > Immanuel Kant has been called the father of modern Transcendentalists: but Socrates and his pupil Plato, so far as we know, were the first of the race. ([Location 62664](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62664)) > Neither buzzing bluebottles nor the fall of dynasties disturbed them. “The soul is everything,” said Plato. “The soul knows all things,” says Emerson. ([Location 62666](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62666)) > George Ripley, Bronson Alcott, and Ralph Waldo Emerson evolved New England Transcendentalism, and very early Henry Thoreau added a few bars of harmonious discords to the symphony. ([Location 62673](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62673)) > He used to run his wheelbarrow into Emerson’s garden and load it up with potatoes, cabbages or turnips, and once in response to a hint that the vegetables were private property, the old man somewhat petulantly exclaimed, “I need them! — I need them!” ([Location 62694](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62694)) > And the consistency of Alcott’s philosophy was shown in that he never took anything or any more than he needed, and if he had something that you needed, you were certainly welcome to it. ([Location 62697](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62697)) > Emerson and Thoreau helped themselves to Alcott’s ideas. ([Location 62698](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62698)) > Thoreau, at this time, was a member of Emerson’s household, and in a letter Emerson says, “He has his board for what labor he chooses to do; he is a great benefactor and physician to me, for he is an indefatigable and skilful laborer, besides being a scholar and a poet, and as full of promise as a young apple-tree.” ([Location 62720](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62720)) > Emerson, who called Thoreau “the young god Pan.” ([Location 62738](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62738)) > Thoreau served Hawthorne as a model for Donatello, the mysterious wood-sprite in the “Marble Faun.” ([Location 62739](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62739)) > Greeley had guessed the truth that the best city reporters are country boys. They observe and hear — all is curious and wonderful to them: by and by they will become blase — sophisticated — that is, blind and deaf. ([Location 62762](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62762)) - Note: Abandoned ladder syndrome > He was resolved to follow the example of Brook Farm, and start a community of his own in opposition. His community would be on the shores of Walden Pond, and the only member of the genus homo who would be eligible to membership would be himself; the other members would be the birds and squirrels and bees, and the trees would make up the rest. ([Location 62774](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62774)) > Thoreau’s retreat would be the same, with the disadvantage of personal contact eliminated. ([Location 62778](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62778)) > The cabin was twelve by fifteen, and cost — furnished — the sum of twenty-eight dollars, good money, not counting labor, which Thoreau did not calculate as worth anything, since he had had the fun of the thing — something for which men often pay high. ([Location 62783](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62783)) > Thoreau was an example of shanty-arrested development. ([Location 62790](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62790)) > Thoreau was no hermit — at least twice a week he would go to the village and meander along the street, gossiping with all or any. Often he would accept invitations to supper, but on principle refused all invitations to remain overnight, no matter what the weather. ([Location 62809](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62809)) > with unconscious humor calls home. Hawthorne hints that Thoreau was a delightful poseur — he posed so naturally that he deceived even himself. ([Location 62813](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62813)) > Thoreau argued the question at length, and among other things, said, “I will not give money to buy a musket, and hire a man to use this musket to shoot another.” And also, “The best government is not that which governs least, but that which governs not at all.” ([Location 62815](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62815)) > He went back to town and told the other officials what had happened. Their dignity was at stake. Alcott had been guilty of a like defiance some time before, and now it was the belief that he was putting the younger man up to insurrection. The next time Thoreau came over to the village for his mail he was arrested and lodged in the local bastile. ([Location 62820](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62820)) > Emerson, hearing of the trouble, hastened to the jail, and reaching the presence of the prisoner asked sternly, “Henry, why are you here?” And the answer was, “Waldo, why are you not here?” ([Location 62823](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62823)) > Thoreau’s cabin-life continued for two Summers and Winters. He had proved that two hours’ manual work each day was sufficient to keep a man — twenty cents a day would suffice. ([Location 62830](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62830)) > Lowell had made a few cutting remarks to the effect that “as compared with shanty-life, the tub of Diogenes was preferable, as it had a much sounder bottom,” and Hawthorne had written of “the beauties of conspicuous solitude.” ([Location 62833](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62833)) > The absence of social ties and of all responsibilities fixed in his peculiar temperament an indifference to hunger, heat, cold, wet, damp, and all bodily discomfort that classes the man with the flagellants. ([Location 62851](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62851)) > A few years of plum-cake, cold mince-pie and continual wet feet will put the petard under even the stoutest constitution. ([Location 62856](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62856)) > It is absurd for a man to make a god of his digestive apparatus, but it is just as bad to forget that the belly is as much the gift of God as the brain. ([Location 62859](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62859)) > The official organ of the transcendentalists, however, paid no honorariums — it was both sincere and serious, and died in due time of too much dignity. ([Location 62872](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62872)) > A lady once asked John Burroughs this question: “What would become of this world if everybody in it patterned after Henry Thoreau?” And Ol’ John replied, “It would be much improved.” ([Location 62901](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62901)) > But your Uncle John is a humorist — he knows that Henry Ward Beecher was right when he said, “God never made but one Thoreau — that was enough, but we are grateful for the one.” ([Location 62903](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62903)) > At dinner once at a neighbor’s he was asked what dish he preferred, and his answer was, “The nearest.” ([Location 62909](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62909)) ### THOREAU by Virginia Woolf > thanks to a secret of his own for mixing levigated plumbago with fuller’s earth and water, rolling it into sheets, cutting it into strips, and burning it. ([Location 62974](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=62974)) > co-operative community, such as Brook Farm; the other in solitude with nature. ... ‘As for the communities,’ he wrote in his journal, ‘I think I had rather keep bachelor’s quarters in hell than go to board in heaven.’ ([Location 63011](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63011)) > He did everything he could to intensify his own understanding of himself, to foster whatever was peculiar, to isolate himself from contact with any force that might interfere with his immensely valuable gift of personality. ([Location 63023](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63023)) > simplicity? Is Thoreau’s simplicity simplicity for its own sake, and not rather a method of intensification, a way of setting free the delicate and complicated machinery of the soul, so that its results are the reverse of simple? ([Location 63032](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63032)) > The most remarkable men tend to discard luxury because they find that it hampers the play of what is much more valuable to them. ([Location 63034](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63034)) > And yet this egoist was the man who sheltered runaway slaves in his hut; this hermit was the first man to speak out in public in defence of John Brown; this self-centred solitary could neither sleep nor think when Brown lay in prison. ([Location 63057](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63057)) > He is never speaking directly to us; he is speaking partly to himself and partly to something mystic beyond our sight. ‘Says I to myself,’ he writes, ‘should be the motto to my journal’, and all his books are journals. ([Location 63067](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63067)) > ‘It appears to be a law,’ he says, ‘that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature. Those qualities which bring you near to the one estrange you from the other.’ ([Location 63076](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63076)) > ‘I am enjoying existence as much as ever,’ he wrote from his deathbed, ‘and regret nothing.’ He was talking to himself of moose and Indian when, without a struggle, he died. ([Location 63094](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63094)) ### 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)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > 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)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > 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)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > 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: BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH by Ralph Waldo Emerson > But he replied, that he should never make another pencil. “Why should I? I would not do again what I have done once.” ([Location 63834](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63834)) > With his hardy habits and few wants, his skill in wood-craft, and his powerful arithmetic, he was very competent to live in any part of the world. ([Location 63844](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63844)) > He was bred to no profession; 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. He chose, wisely, no doubt, for himself, to be the bachelor of thought and Nature. He had no talent for wealth, and knew how to be poor without the least hint of squalor or inelegance. ([Location 63854](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63854)) > “In every part of Great Britain,” he wrote in his diary, “are discovered traces of the Romans, their funereal urns, their camps, their roads, their dwellings. But New England, at least, is not based on any Roman ruins. We have not to lay the foundations of our houses on the ashes of a former civilization.” ([Location 63905](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63905)) > Before the first friendly word had been spoken for Captain John Brown, after the arrest, he sent notices to most houses in Concord, that he would speak in a public hall on the condition and character of John Brown, on Sunday evening, and invited all people to come. The Republican Committee, the Abolitionist Committee, sent him word that it was premature and not advisable. He replied,— “I did not send to you for advice, but to announce that I am to speak.” ([Location 63911](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63911)) > He drew out of his breast-pocket his diary, and read the names of all the plants that should bloom on this day, whereof he kept account as a banker when his notes fall due. ([Location 63997](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=63997)) - Note: Jeffersonian note taker > His own verses are often rude and defective. The gold does not yet run pure, is drossy and crude. The thyme and marjoram are not yet honey. ([Location 64044](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=64044)) > 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.” ([Location 64067](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=64067)) > “Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.” ([Location 64109](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DRNYOFE&location=64109)) - Note: Holmes noble bachelor