That age will be rich indeed when those relics which we call Classics, and the still older and more than classic but even less known Scriptures of the nations, shall have still further accumulated, when the Vaticans shall be filled with Vedas and Zendavestas and Bibles, with Homers and Dantes and Shakespeares, and all the centuries to come shall have successively deposited their trophies in the forum of the world. By such a pile we may hope to scale heaven at last.
āWaldenThat certainly is the best government where the inhabitants are least often reminded of the government.
āJournal, 21 August 1851That nation is not Christian where the principles of humanity so not prevail, but the prejudices of race.
āJournal, 25 September 1851That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another’s. We see so much only as we possess.
āJournal, 22 June 1839The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo, Persian, and Greek, were a class than which none has been poorer in outward riches, none so rich in inward. We know not much about them. It is remarkable that we know so much of them as we do.
āWaldenThe arrow shot by the Indian is still found occasionally sticking in the trees of our forest.
āJournal, 1 July 1850The art of life, of a poet’s life is, not having any thing to do, to do something.
āJournal, 29 April 1852The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or nature.
āA Week on the Concord and Merrimack RiversThe audience are never tired of hearing how far the wind carried some man, woman, or child, or family Bible, but they are immediately tired if you undertake to give them a scientific account of it.
āJournal, 4 February 1852The beauty of the earth answers exactly to your demand and appreciation.
āJournal, 2 November 1858The best man’s spirit makes a fearful sprite to haunt his tomb. The ghost of a priest is no better than that of a highwayman.
āJournal, 23 December 1841The best philosophy untrue that aims
But to console man for his grievances.
The best thing a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those schemes which he entertained when he was poor.
ā"Resistance to Civil Government"The best way to correct a mistake is to make it right.
āThoreau to Ralph Waldo Emerson, 24 January 1843The bigoted and sectarian forget that without religion or devotion of some kind nothing great was ever accomplished.
āJournal, 27 July 1852The birds seem to flit through submerged groves, alighting on yielding sprays, and their clear notes to come up from below.
āA Week on the Concord and Merrimack RiversThe book exists for us perchance which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. These same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to all the wise men; not one has been omitted; and each has answered them, according to his ability, by his words and his life.
āWaldenThe Brahman never proposes courageously to assault evil, but patiently to starve it out. His active faculties are paralyzed by the idea of cast, of impassable limits, of destiny and the tyranny of time.
āA Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers