Henry David Thoreau Quotations: RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY
We might so simplify the rules of moral philosophy, as well as of arithmetic, that one formula would express them both. All the moral laws are readily translated into natural philosophy, for often we have only to restore the primitive meaning of the words by which they are expressed, or to attend to their literal instead of their metaphorical sense. They are already supernatural philosophy.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
We need pray for no higher heaven than the pure senses can furnish, a purely sensuous life. Our present senses are but the rudiments of what they are destined to become. We are comparatively deaf and dumb and blind, and without smell or taste or feeling.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
We saw one school-house in our walk, and listened to the sounds which issued from it; but it appeared like a place where the process, not of enlightening, but of obfuscating the mind was going on, and the pupils received only so much light as could penetrate the shadow of the Catholic church.—A Yankee in Canada
We should live in all the ages of the world in an hour; ay, in all the worlds of the ages. History, Poetry, Mythology!—I know of no reading of another's experience so startling and informing as this would be.—Walden
What if God were to confide in us for a moment! Should we not then be gods?—Thoreau to Ralph Waldo Emerson, 12 February 1843
What is a course of history or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer?—Walden
What is called the religious world very generally deny virtue to all who have not received the Gospel.—Journal, 4 December 1860
What would we not give for some great poem to read now, which would be in harmony with the scenery,—for if men read aright, methinks they would never read anything but poems. No history nor philosophy can supply their place.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
What youthful philosophers and experimentalists we are!—Walden
When heaven begins and the dead arise, no trumpet is blown; perhaps the south wind will blow. What if you or I be dead! God is alive still.—Journal, 13 March 1842
