Henry David Thoreau Quotes About Gold

• I also have in mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Class, Mind, Gold

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.20, Graphic Arts Books

• A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Wisdom, Gold, Surface

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “Civil Disobedience and Other Essays”, p.80, Courier Corporation

• In our daily intercourse with men, our nobler faculties are dormant and suffered to rust. None will pay us the compliment to expect nobleness from us. Though we have gold to give, they demand only copper.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Character, Men, Giving

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.111, Penguin

• It is rare that we use our thinking faculty as resolutely as an irishman his spade. To please our friends and relatives we turn out our silver ore in cartloads, while we neglect to workour mines of gold known only to ourselves far up in the Sierras, where we pulled up a bush in our mountain walk, and saw the glittering treasure. Let us return thither. Let it be the price of our freedom to make that known.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Thinking, Gold, Mountain

  Henry David Thoreau, David Gross (2007). “The Price of Freedom: Political Philosophy from Thoreau's Journals”, p.4, David M Gross

• The majority of the men of the North, and of the South and East and West, are not men of principle. If they vote, they do not sendmen to Congress on errands of humanity; but while their brothers and sisters are being scourged and hung for loving liberty,... it is the mismanagement of wood and iron and stone and gold which concerns them.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Brother, Men, Iron

• I did not know that mankind was suffering for want of gold.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Suffering, Gold, Want

  Henry David Thoreau (1992). “The Essays of Henry David Thoreau”, p.79, Rowman & Littlefield

• Men rush to California and Australia as if the true gold were to be found in that direction but that is to go to the very opposite extreme to where it lies. They go prospecting farther and farther away from the true lead, and are most unfortunate when they think themselves most successful.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Lying, Successful, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.419, Penguin

• Perfect alchemists I keep who can transmute substances without end, and thus the corner of my garden is an inexhaustible treasure-chest. Here you can dig, not gold, but the value which gold merely represents; and there is no Signor Blitz about it.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Garden, Perfect, Alchemist

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.1236, Delphi Classics

• After reading Howitt's account of the Australian gold-diggings one evening,... I asked myself why I might not be washing some golddaily, though it were only the finest particles,--why I might not sink a shaft down to the gold within me, and work that mine.... At any rate, I might pursue some path, however solitary and narrow and crooked, in which I could walk with love and reverence.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Wisdom, Reading, Solitude

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “Civil Disobedience and Other Essays”, p.81, Courier Corporation

• The gold-digger is the enemy of the honest laborer, whatever checks and compensations there may be. It is not enough to tell me that you worked hard to get your gold. So does the Devil work hard. The way of transgressors may be hard in many respects.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Respect, Hard Work, Enemy

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.413, Simon and Schuster

• The humblest observer who goes to the mines sees and says that gold-digging is of the character of a lottery; the gold thus obtained is not the same thing with the wages of honest toil. But, practically, he forgets what he has seen, for he has seen only the fact, not the principle, and goes into trade there, that is, buys a ticket in what commonly proves another lottery, where the fact is not so obvious.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Character, Gambling, Gold

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.413, Simon and Schuster

• When I think of the gold-diggers and the Mormons, the slaves and the slave-holders and the flibustiers, I naturally dream of a glorious private life. No, I am not patriotic.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Dream, Patriotic, Thinking

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Familiar Letters (Annotated Edition)”, p.196, Jazzybee Verlag

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