Henry David Thoreau Quotes About Culture

• It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Sheep, Culture, Literature

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.407, Penguin

• 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

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Culture, Rich

  Henry David Thoreau (2004). “Walden and Civil Disobedience”, p.375, Simon and Schuster

• The culture of the hop ... so analagous to the culture and uses of the grape, may afford a theme for future poets.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Beer, Culture, Use

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.209, Simon and Schuster

• I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute Freedom and Wildness, as contrasted with a Freedom and Culture merely civil, - to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Nature, Men, Wish

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “Essays of Henry David Thoreau - Walking”, p.2, Editora Dracaena

• When it was proposed to me to go abroad, rub oft some rust, and better my condition in a worldly sense, I fear lest my life will lose some of its homeliness. If these fields and streams and woods, the phenomena of nature here, and the simple occupations of the inhabitants should cease to interest and inspire me, no culture or wealth would atone for the loss.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Travel, Home, Loss

• The best books are not read even by those who are called good readers. What does our Concord culture amount to? There is in this town, with a very few exceptions, no taste for the best or for very good books even in English literature, whose words all can read and spell.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Book, Doe, Culture

  Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience: Top American Literary”, p.67, 谷月社

• If we live in the Nineteenth Century, why should we not enjoy the advantages which the Nineteenth Century offers? Why should our life be in any respect provincial?

  Henry David Thoreau

  Respect, Progress, Culture

  Henry David Thoreau (1995). “Walden, Or, Life in the Woods”, p.71, Courier Corporation

• When we want culture more than potatoes, and illumination more than sugar-plums, then the great resources of a world are taxed anddrawn out, and the result, or staple production, is, not slaves, nor operatives, but men,--those rare fruits called heroes, saints, poets, philosophers, and redeemers.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Philosophical, Hero, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2000). “Walden and Other Writings: (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.774, Modern Library

• A man will not need to study history to find out what is best for his own culture.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, History, Needs

  Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Walden and Civil Disobedience”, p.148, Xist Publishing

• Paper is cheap, and authors need not now erase one book before they write another. Instead of cultivating the earth for wheat andpotatoes, they cultivate literature, and fill a place in the Republic of Letters. Or they would fain write for fame merely, as others actually raise crops of grain to be distilled into brandy.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Book, Writing, Paper

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.68, Xist Publishing

• Alas! the culture of an Irishman is an enterprise to be undertaken with a sort of moral bog hoe.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Hoe, Culture, Bogs

  Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Walden”, p.176, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• But there are spirits of a yet more liberal culture, to whom no simplicity is barren. There are not only stately pines, but fragile flowers, like the orchises, commonly described as too delicate for cultivation, which derive their nutriment from the crudest mass of peat. These remind us, that, not only for strength, but for beauty, the poet must, from time to time, travel the logger's path and the Indian's trail, to drink at some new and more bracing fountain of the Muses, far in the recesses of the wilderness.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Inspirational, Flower, Simplicity

  Henry David Thoreau (1873). “The Maine Woods”, p.160

• The civilized nations--Greece, Rome, England--have been sustained by the primitive forests which anciently rotted where they stand. They survive as long as the soil is not exhausted. Alas for human culture! little is to be expected of a nation, when the vegetable mould is exhausted, and it is compelled to make manure of the bones of its fathers. There the poet sustains himself merely by his own superfluous fat, and the philosopher comes down on his marrow-bones.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Nature, Father, Rome

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Selected Essays of Henry David Thoreau”, p.170, Simon and Schuster

• Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours,
  Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children,
  as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned
  from her breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively
  an interaction of man on man.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Mother, Nature, Children

  Henry David Thoreau, Joseph O. Valentine, Thoreau Society (2001). “Thoreau on Land: Nature's Canvas”, p.44, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• In society, in the best institutions of men, it is easy to detect a certain precocity. When we should still be growing children, we are already little men. Give me a culture which imports much muck from the meadows, and deepens the soil,--not that which trusts to heating manures, and improved implements, and modes of culture only!

  Henry David Thoreau

  Nature, Children, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.408, Penguin

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