The pen is indeed mightier than the sword. The swords actions are immediate, with drawn out authority that always ends in obscurity. The words of the past have a potential for immortality. Here are some of my favorite quotes from Walden, about 10 years ago.
Omar Bailey
WALDEN QUOTES:
“Would it not be well if we were to celebrate such a “busk” or “feast of first fruits”, as Bartram describes to have been the custom of the Mucclasse Indians? “When a town celebrates the busk” he says, “having previously provided themselves with new clothes, new pots, pans and other household utensils and furniture, they collect all their worn out clothes and other despicable things, sweep and cleanse their houses, squares, and the whole town, of their filth, which with all the remaining grain and other old provisions they cast together into one common heap, and consume it with fire. After having taken medicine, and fasted for three days, all the fire in the town is extinguished. During the fast they abstain from the gratification of every appetite and passion whatever. A general amnesty is proclaimed; all malefactors may return to their town.””
“On the forth morning, the high priest, by rubbing dry wood together, produces new fire in the public square, from whence every habitation in the town is supplied with the new and pure flame.” p. 47
“They then feast on the new corn and fruits, and dance and sing for three days, “and the four following days they receive visits and rejoice with their friends from neighboring towns who have in the like manner purified and prepared themselves.””
“The Mexicans also practiced a similar purification at the end of every fifty-two years,” p. 47
“I intend to build me a house which will surpass any on the main street of Concord in grandeur and luxury, as soon as it pleases me as much and will cost me no more than my present one.” p. 47
“Which would have advanced the more at the end of a months,- the body who had made his own jackknife from the ore which he had dug and smelted, reading as much as would be necessary, for this- or the boy who had attended the lecture on metallurgy at the Institute in the meanwhile, and had received a Roger’s penknife from his father? Which would be most likely to cut his fingers?” p. 35
“In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain oneself on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely;” p. 47
“There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.”
“I never knew, and never shall know, a worse man than myself.” p. 52
“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” p.52
“My instinct tells me that my head is an organ burrowing, as some creatures use their snout and for-paws, and with it I would mine and burrow my way through these hills. I think that the richest vein is somewhere hereabouts; so by the divining rod and thin rising vapors I judge; and here I begin to mine. p. 61
“Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again”” p. 61
“The mourning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour.” P. 61
“That man who does not believe that each day contains an earlier, more sacred, and auroral hour than he has yet profaned, has despaired of life, and is pursuing a descending and darkening way.” p. 61
Emerson
“digest and correct past experience; and blend it with the new and divine life.” Walden, p. 68
“I kept neither dog, cat, cow, pig, not hens, so that you would have said there was a deficiency of domestic sounds; neither the churn, nor the spinning-wheel, nor even the singing of the kettle, nor the hissing of the urn, nor children cry to comfort one. An old-fashioned man would have lost his senses or died of ennui before this. Not even rats in the wall, for they were starved out, or rather were never baited in,” p. 88
Re Canadian neighbor;
“At another time, hearing Plato’s definition of a man, -a biped without feathers,- and that one exhibited a cock plucked and called it Plato’s man, he thought it an important difference that the knees were bent the wrong way.” p 103
“And now to night my flute has waked the echoes over that very water.” p 107
“Not that I wanted beans to eat, for I am by nature a Pythagorean, so far as beans are concerned, whether they mean porridge or voting, and exchanged them for rice; but perchance, as some must work in fields if only for the sake of tropes and expression, to serve as parable-maker one day.” p 112
“Besides, there was a still more terrible standing invitation to call at everyone of these house, and company expected about these times. For the most part, I escaped wonderfully from these changes, either by proceeding at once boldly and without deliberances to the good, as is recommended to those who run the gauntlet, or by keeping my thoughts on high-things, like Orpheus, who “loudly singing the praises of the goods to his lyre, drowned the voices of the Sirens, kept out of danger.” Pgs 116-117
66
“Nee bella fuerunt, faginus astabat dum scyphus ante dapes”
“Nor wars did men molest, When only beechen bowls were in request”
The virtues of a superiors man are like the wind; the virtues of a common man are like the grass, the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends.” P119
“Like many of my contemporaries, I had rarely for many years used animal food, or tea, or coffee, etc; not so much because of any ill effects, which I had traced to the, as because they were not agreeable to my imagination. The repugnance to animal food is not the effect of experience, but it is an instinct.” P 147
“Whatever my own practice may be I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.” P 148
“We tried our teeth on many a nut which wise squirrels have long since abandoned, for those which have the thickest shells are commonly empty.” p 183
Walden, Spring
“The pond does not thunder every evening, and I cannot tell surely when to expect its thundering; but though I may perceive no difference in the weather, it does. Who would have respected so large and cold and thick skinned a thing to be so sensitive. Yet it has it’s law to which it thunders obedience when it should as surely as the weeds expand in the spring. The earth is all alive and covered with papillae. The largest pond is as sensitive to atmosphere changes as the globule of mercury in its tube.” p 206
“Direct your eye right inward, and you’ll find a thousand regions in your mind yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be expert in homo-cosmography.” p 218
“Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.” p 224
“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board. The hospitality was cold as the ices. I thought that there was no need of ice to freeze them. They talked to me of the age of the wine and the fame of the vintage; but I thought of an older, a newer, and a purer wine, of a more glorious vintage, which they has not got, and could not buy. The style, the house and grounds and “entertainment” pass for nothing with me. I called on the king, but he made me wait in his hall, and conducted like a man incapacitated for hospitality. There was a man in my neighborhood who lived in a hollow tree. His manners were truly regal. I should have done better had I called on him.” p 226
All the above quotes come from “Walden Civil Disobedience”, Thoreau, Houton Miffin Co. Boston, Mass, USA, 1960
“for a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone”
Thoreau from Less is More, Harper Row, NY, NY 1978
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