Walden — Henry David Thoreau

Walden

Henry David Thoreau · Licencia: Public domain · Fuente

• 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 like manner purified and prepared themselves." ¶147
• The Mexicans also practised a similar purification at the end of every fifty-two years, in the belief that it was time for the world to come to an end. ¶148
• I have scarcely heard of a truer sacrament, that is, as the dictionary defines it, "outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace," than this, and I have no doubt that they were originally inspired directly from Heaven to do thus, though they have no Biblical record of the revelation. ¶149
• Where I Lived, and What I Lived For ¶170
• "I am monarch of all I _survey_, My right there is none to dispute." ¶173
• "There was a shepherd that did live, And held his thoughts as high As were the mounts whereon his flocks Did hourly feed him by." ¶186
• What should we think of the shepherd's life if his flocks always wandered to higher pastures than his thoughts? ¶187
• "In truth, our village has become a butt For one of those fleet railroad shafts, and o'er Our peaceful plain its soothing sound is--Concord." ¶218
• "to be the mast Of some great ammiral." ¶227
• What's the railroad to me? I never go to see Where it ends. It fills a few hollows, And makes banks for the swallows, It sets the sand a-blowing, And the blackberries a-growing, ¶229
• but I cross it like a cart-path in the woods. I will not have my eyes put out and my ears spoiled by its smoke and steam and hissing. ¶230
• Now that the cars are gone by and all the restless world with them, and the fishes in the pond no longer feel their rumbling, I am more alone than ever. For the rest of the long afternoon, perhaps, my meditations are interrupted only by the faint rattle of a carriage or team along the distant highway. ¶232
• "Mourning untimely consumes the sad; Few are their days in the land of the living, Beautiful daughter of Toscar." ¶246
• "How vast and profound is the influence of the subtile powers of Heaven and of Earth!" ¶249
• "We seek to perceive them, and we do not see them; we seek to hear them, and we do not hear them; identified with the substance of things, they cannot be separated from them." ¶250
• "They cause that in all the universe men purify and sanctify their hearts, and clothe themselves in their holiday garments to offer sacrifices and oblations to their ancestors. It is an ocean of subtile intelligences. They are everywhere, above us, on our left, on our right; they environ us on all sides." ¶251
• We are the subjects of an experiment which is not a little interesting to me. Can we not do without the society of our gossips a little while under these circumstances--have our own thoughts to cheer us? Confucius says truly, "Virtue does not remain as an abandoned orphan; it must of necessity have neighbors." ¶252
• I think that I love society as much as most, and am ready enough to fasten myself like a bloodsucker for the time to any full-blooded man that comes in my way. I am naturally no hermit, but might possibly sit out the sturdiest frequenter of the bar-room, if my business called me thither. ¶262
• My "best" room, however, my withdrawing room, always ready for company, on whose carpet the sun rarely fell, was the pine wood behind my house. Thither in summer days, when distinguished guests came, I took them, and a priceless domestic swept the floor and dusted the furniture and kept the things in order. ¶265
• "Arrivèd there, the little house they fill, Ne looke for entertainment where none was; Rest is their feast, and all things at their will: The noblest mind the best contentment has." ¶267
• "Or have you alone heard some news from Phthia? They say that Menoetius lives yet, son of Actor, And Peleus lives, son of Æacus, among the Myrmidons, Either of whom having died, we should greatly grieve." ¶271

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