Henry David Thoreau Quotations: Philosophy & Philosophers
The sum of what the writer of what ever class has to report is simply some human experience, whether he be poet or philosopher or man of science.—Journal, 6 May 1854
There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers.—Walden
There is many a book which ripples on like a freshet, and flows as glibly as a mill-stream sucking under a causeway; and when their authors are in the full tide of their discourse, Pythagoras and Plato and Jamblichus halt beside them.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
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
Veias, Menu, Zoroaster, Socrates, Christ, Shakespeare, Swedenborg,—these are some of our astronomers.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
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 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
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
