Henry David Thoreau Quotations: Society
Society is always diseased, and the best is the most so.—"Natural History of Massachusetts"
Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other.—Walden
The doctors are all agreed that I am suffering from want of society. Was never a case like it. First, I did not know that I was suffering at all. Secondly, as an Irishman might say, I had thought it was indigestion of the society I got.—Thoreau to H. G. O. Blake, 1 January 1859
The mind that perceives clearly any natural beauty is in that instant withdrawn from human society. My desire for society is infinitely increased—my fitness for any actual society is diminished.—Journal, 26 July 1852
The more we know about the ancients, the more we find that they were like the moderns.—Journal, 2 September 1851
The social condition of genius is the same in all ages. Aeschylus was undoubtedly alone and without sympathy in his simple reverence for the mystery of the universe.—Journal, 29 January 1840
There is a coarse and boisterous money-making fellow in the outskirts of our town who is going to build a blank-wall under the hill along the edge of his meadow. The powers have put this into his head to keep him out of mischief, and he wishes me to spend three weeks digging there with him. The result will be that he will perhaps get some more money to hoard, and leave for his heirs to spend foolishly. If I do this, most will commend me as an industrious and hard-working man; but if I choose to devote myself to certain labors which yield more real profit, though but little money they may be inclined to look on me as an idler. Nevertheless, as I do not need the police of meaningless labor to regulate me, and do not see anything absolutely praiseworthy in this fellow’s undertaking any more than in many an enterprise of our own or foreign governments, however amusing it may be to him or them, I prefer to finish my education at a different school.—"Life Without Principle"
Thus a man shall lead his life away from here on the edge of the wilderness, in Indian Millinocket stream, in a new world, far in the dark of a continent, and have a flute to play at evening here, while his strains echo to the stars, amid the howling of wolves; shall live, as it were, in the primitive age of the world, a primitive man.—The Maine Woods
Wealth cannot purchase any great private solace or convenience. Riches are only the means of sociality.—Journal, 2 January 1842
What we call wildness is a civilization other than our own.—Journal, 16 February 1859
