Idealist as he was, standing for abolition of slavery, abolition…

Idealist as he was, standing for abolition of slavery, abolition of tariffs, almost for abolition of government, it is needless to say he found himself not only unrepresented in actual politics, but almost equally opposed to every class of reformers.

Quotes about Thoreau

Ralph Waldo Emerson in “Thoreau” in The Atlantic Monthly (August 1862)

Other Henry David Thoreau Quotes

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. - View Quote Details on How vain it is to sit down to write when…
To speak impartially, the best men that I know are not serene, a world in themselves. For the most part, they dwell in forms, and flatter and study effect only more finely than the rest. We select granite for the underpinning of our houses and barns; we build fences of stone; but we do not ourselves rest on an underpinning of granitic truth, the lowest primitive rock. Our sills are rotten. - View Quote Details on To speak impartially, the best men that I know are…
For eighteen hundred years, though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written; yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of legislation? - View Quote Details on For eighteen hundred years, though perchance I have no right…
I speak for the slave when I say that I prefer the philanthropy of Captain Brown to that philanthropy which neither shoots me nor liberates me. - View Quote Details on I speak for the slave when I say that I…
In some lyceums they tell me that they have voted to exclude the subject of religion. But how do I know what their religion is, and when I am near to or far from it? I have walked into such an arena and done my best to make a clean breast of what religion I have experienced, and the audience never suspected what I was about. - View Quote Details on In some lyceums they tell me that they have voted…
In wildness is the preservation of the world. - View Quote Details on In wildness is the preservation of the world.
What is called politics is comparatively something so superficial and inhuman, that, practically, I have never fairly recognized that it concerns me at all. The newspapers, I perceive, devote some of their columns specially to politics or government without charge; and this, one would say, is all that saves it; but, as I love literature, and, to some extent, the truth also, I never read those columns at any rate. I do not wish to blunt my sense of right so much. - View Quote Details on What is called politics is comparatively something so superficial and…
Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk. - View Quote Details on Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find…
What are the earth and all its interests beside the deep surmise which pierces and scatters them? - View Quote Details on What are the earth and all its interests beside the…
Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate. - View Quote Details on Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own…