Henry David Thoreau Quotations: RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY
To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.—Walden
To some extent, mythology is only the most ancient history and biography.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
To the philosopher all sects all nations are alike. I like Brahma, Hare, Buddha, the Great Spirit, as well as God.—Journal, 26 April 1850
Veias, Menu, Zoroaster, Socrates, Christ, Shakespeare, Swedenborg,—these are some of our astronomers.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
Was awakened in the night to a strain of music dying away,—passing travellers singing. My being was so expanded and infinitely and divinely related for a brief season that I saw how unexhausted, how almost wholly unimproved, was man’s capacity for a divine life. When I remembered what a narrow and finite life I should anon awake to!—Journal, 19 April 1856
We can tolerate all philosophies, Atomists, Pneumatologists, Atheists, Theists,—Plato, Aristotle, Leucippus, Democritus, Pythagoras, Zoroaster, and Confucius. It is the attitude of these men, more than any communication which they make, that attracts us.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
We could get no further into the Aeneid than—atque altae moenia Romae,—and the wall of high Rome, before we were constrained to reflect by what myriad tests a work of genius has to be tried; that Virgil, away in Rome, two thousand years off, should have to unfold his meaning, the inspiration of Italian vales, to the pilgrim on New England hills.—"A Walk to Wachusett"
We do not learn by inference and deduction, and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.—"Natural History of Massachusetts"
We inspire friendship in men when we have contracted friendship with the gods.—Journal, June 1850
We made many a “bran new” theory of life over a thin dish of gruel, which combined the advantages of conviviality with the clear-headedness which philosophy requires.—Walden
