Henry David Thoreau Quotes About Tradition

• I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Doors, Years

  Henry David Thoreau (2010). “Walden”, p.300, Bibliolis Books

• Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downwards through the mud and slush of opinion and tradition, and pride and prejudice, appearance and delusion, through the alluvium which covers the globe, through poetry and philosophy and religion, through church and state, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, till we come to a hard bottom that rocks in place which we can call reality and say, "This is and no mistake.

  Henry David Thoreau

  New York, Philosophy, Mistake

• I look upon England today as an old gentleman who is travelling with a great deal of baggage, trumpery which has accumulated fromlong housekeeping, which he has not the courage to burn.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Gentleman, Looks, Today

  Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience: Top American Literary”, p.42, 谷月社

• So easy is it, though many housekeepers doubt it, to establish new and better customs in the place of the old.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Change, Doubt, Tradition

  Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Walden and Civil Disobedience”, p.103, Xist Publishing

• Tradition is a more interrupted and feebler memory.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Memories, Tradition, Interrupted

  Henry David Thoreau (1873). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.309

• This American government - what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Integrity, Men, Vitality

  Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience: Top American Literary”, p.206, 谷月社

• The husbandman is always a better Greek than the scholar is prepared to appreciate, and the old custom still survives, while antiquarians and scholars grow gray in commemorating it.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Appreciate, Greek, Tradition

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.254, Delphi Classics

• The first sparrow of spring! The year beginning with younger hope than ever!... What at such a time are histories, chronologies, traditions, and all written revelations? The brooks sing carols and glees to the spring.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Spring, Years, Glee

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.180, Simon and Schuster

• In my short experience of human life, the outward obstacles, if there were any such, have not been living men, but the institutions of the dead.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Obstacles, Tradition

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.91, Xist Publishing

• ...how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!

  Henry David Thoreau

  Ruts, Conformity, Tradition

  Henry David Thoreau (1999). “Uncommon Learning: Thoreau on Education”, p.27, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Why will we be imposed on by antiquity?

  Henry David Thoreau

  Independence, Originality, Tradition

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.107, Xist Publishing

• There they lived on, those New England people, farmer lives, father and grandfather and great-grandfather, on and on without noise, keeping up tradition, and expecting, beside fair weather and abundant harvests, we did not learn what. They were contented to live, since it was so contrived for them, and where their lines had fallen.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Life, Father, Weather

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.166, Delphi Classics

• All men are partially buried in the grave of custom, and of some we see only the crown of the head above ground. Better are the physically dead, for they more lively rot. Even virtue is no longer such if it be stagnant. A man's life should be constantly as fresh as this river. It should be the same channel, but a new water every instant.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Rivers, Water

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.93, Xist Publishing

• But it is fit that the Past should be dark; though the darkness is not so much a quality of the past as of tradition. It is not adistance of time, but a distance of relation, which makes thus dusky its memorials. What is near to the heart of this generation is fair and bright still. Greece lies outspread fair and sunshiny in floods of light, for there is the sun and daylight in her literature and art. Homer does not allow us to forget that the sun shone,--nor Phidias, nor the Parthenon.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Art, Distance, Lying

• Commonly men will only be brave as their fathers were brave, or timid.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Father, Men, Bravery

  Henry David Thoreau (1882). “Walden”, p.255

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