Quotations by
Massachusetts Writers

Henry David Thoreau
(1817-62)
Philosopher, Author, Naturalist, Essayist
Birthplace: Concord

He is the best sailor who can steer within fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive power out of the greatest obstacles.

We seem but to linger in manhood to tell the dreams of our childhood, and they vanish out of memory ere we learn the language.

On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world.

Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones.

Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institution--such call I good books.

For what are the classics but the noblest thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old.

It is difficult to begin without borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit your fellow-men to have an interest in your enterprise.

If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself.

Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense? The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring.

I have a great deal of company in my house; especially in the morning, when nobody calls.

As to conforming outwardly, and living your own life inwardly, I have not a very high opinion of that course.

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.

There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.

I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.

You must not blame me if I do talk to the clouds.

Whether the flower looks better in the nosegay than in the meadow where it grew and we had to wet our feet to get it! Is the scholastic air any advantage?

What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.

How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?

I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.

I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it.

Being is the great explainer.

The words which express our faith and piety are not definite; yet they are significant and fragrant like frankincense to superior natures.

The perch swallows the grub-worm, the pickerel swallows the perch, and the fisherman swallows the pickerel; and so all the chinks in the scale of being are filled.

One of the most attractive things about the flowers is their beautiful reserve.

I have found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also.

To say that a man is your Friend, means commonly no more than this, that he is not your enemy. Most contemplate only what would be the accidental and trifling advantages of Friendship, as that the Friend can assist in time of need by his substance, or his influence, or his counsel. . . . Even the utmost goodwill and harmony and practical kindness are not sufficient for Friendship, for Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody.

We have not so good a right to hate any as our Friend.

I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.

It seems to me that the god that is commonly worshipped in civilized countries is not at all divine, though he bears a divine name, but is the overwhelming authority and respectability of mankind combined. Men reverence one another, not yet God.

Absolutely speaking, Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you is by no means a golden rule, but the best of current silver. An honest man would have but little occasion for it. It is golden not to have any rule at all in such a case.

If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.

Goodness is the only investment that never fails.

Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government.

When I hear the hypercritical quarreling about grammar and style, the position of the particles, etc., etc., stretching or contracting every speaker to certain rules of theirs . . . I see that they forget that the first requisite and rule is that expression shall be vital and natural, as much as the voice of a brute or an interjection: first of all, mother tongue; and last of all, artificial or father tongue. Essentially your truest poetic sentence is as free and lawless as a lamb's bleat.

Any fool can make a rule
And every fool will mind it.

He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise.

What right have I to grieve, who have not ceased to wonder?

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. . . . I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

Should not every apartment in which man dwells be lofty enough to create some obscurity overhead, where flickering shadows may play at evening about the rafters?

Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, and hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready, and it may be a long time before they get off.

Write while the heat is in you. . . . The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.

What is peculiar in the life of a man consists not in his obedience, but his opposition, to his instincts. In one direction or another he strives to live a supernatural life.

The laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day.

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.

A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.

The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.

He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate.

A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars. What are threescore years and ten hurriedly and coarsely lived to moments of divine leisure in which your life is coincident with the life of the universe?

Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevaton of mankind.

The mass never comes up to the standard of its best member, but on the contrary degrades itself to a level with the lowest.

In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds.

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.

A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.

Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice.

Nations! What are nations? Tartars! and Huns! and Chinamen! Like insects they swarm. The historian strives in vain to make them memorable. It is for want of a man that there are so many men. It is individuals that populate the world.

We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder-cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.

To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit it and read it are old women over their tea.

You know about a person who deeply interests you more than you can be told. A look, a gesture, an act, which to everybody else is insignificant tells you more about that one than words can.

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.

A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind.

The poet is a man who lives at last by watching his moods. An old poet comes at last to watch his moods as narrowly as a cat does a mouse.

A farmer, a hunter, a soldier, a reporter, even a philosopher, may be daunted; but nothing can deter a poet, for he is actuated by pure love. Who can predict his comings and goings? His business calls him out at all hours, even when doctors sleep.

We are not what we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for what we are capable of being.

Give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

The purity men love is like the mists which envelope the earth, and not like the azure ether beyond.

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any other exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object.

Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it come to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.

What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

The rich man . . . is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue.

Our manners have been corrupted by communication with the saints.

Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.

The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.

Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.

We cannot well do without our sins; they are the highway of our virtue.

After the first blush of sin comes its indifference.

I only desire sincere relations with the worthiest of my acquaintance, that they may give me an opportunity once in a year to speak the truth.

What men call social virtues, good fellowship, is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter, which lie close together to keep each other warm.

I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.

It would give me such joy to know that a friend had come to see me, and yet that pleasure I seldom if ever experience.

Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout.

I just looked up at a fine twinkling star and thought that a voyager whom I know, now many days' sail from this coast, might possibly be looking up at that same star with me.

There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. I please myself with imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose if a few went to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men. A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen.

I was never molested by any person but those who represented the State

The sun is but a morning star.

We are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspected.

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end.

If I were confined to a corner of a garret all my days, like a spider, the world would be just as large to me while I had my thoughts about me.

Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and whittled them.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

But lo! men have become the tools of their tools.

He who is only a traveler learns things at second-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority. We are most interested when science reports what those men already know practically or instinctively, for that alone is a true humanity, or account of human experience.

It takes two to speak the truth--one to speak and another to hear.

We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see. How few things can a man measure with the tape of his understanding! How many greater things might he be seeing in the meanwhile!

The universe is wider than our views of it.

At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable.

I have no doubt that it is a 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.

There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man.

All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong.

I have a deep sympathy with war, it so apes the gait and bearing of the soul.

Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.

In wildness is the preservation of the world.

Sometimes we are inclined to class those who are once-and-a-half witted with the half-witted, because we appreciate only a third part of their wit.

The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement.

The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure.

John Greenleaf Whittier
(1807-92)
Poet
Birthplace: Haverhill

They tell me, Lucy, thou art dead,
That all of thee we loved and cherished
Has with thy summer roses perished;
And left, as its young beauty fled,
An ashen memory in its stead.

The dreariest spot in all the land
To Death they set apart;
With scanty grace from Nature's hand,
And none from that of Art.

Through this broad street, restless ever,
Ebbs and flows a human tide,
Wave on wave a living river;
Wealth and fashion side by side;
Toiler, idler, slave and master, in the same quick current glide.

Of all that Orient lands can vaunt,
Of marvels with our own competing,
The strangest is the Haschish plant,
And what will follow on its eating.

Give fools their gold, and knaves their power;
Let fortune's bubbles rise and fall;
Who sows a field, or trains a flower,
Or plants a tree, is more than all.

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"