Henry David Thoreau Quotes About Wall

• And now that we have returned to the desultory life of the plain, let us endeavor to import a little of that mountain grandeur into it. We will remember within what walls we lie, and understand that this level life too has its summit, and why from the mountain-top the deepest valleys have a tinge of blue; that there is elevation in every hour, as no part of the earth is so low that the heavens may not be seen from, and we have only to stand on the summit of our hour to command an uninterrupted horizon.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Life, Wall, Lying

  Henry David Thoreau (1992). “The Essays of Henry David Thoreau”, p.103, Rowman & Littlefield

• Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Wall, Work, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2002). “The Essays of Henry D. Thoreau: Selected and Edited by Lewis Hyde”, p.283, North Point Press

• As far as our noblest hardwood forests are concerned, the animals, especially squirrels and jays, are our greatest and almost only benefactors. It is to them that we owe this gift. It is not in vain that the squirrels live in or about every forest tree, or hollow log, and every wall and heap of stones.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Wall, Animal, Squirrels

  David R. Foster, Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Thoreau's Country: Journey through a Transformed Landscape”, p.147, Harvard University Press

• It is only necessary that man should start a fence that Nature should carry it on and complete it. The farmer cannot plow quite up to the rails or wall which he himself has placed, and hence it often becomes a hedgerow and sometimes a coppice.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Wall, Men, Hedgerows

  David R. Foster, Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Thoreau's Country: Journey through a Transformed Landscape”, p.67, Harvard University Press

• A temple, you know, was anciently "an open place without a roof," whose walls served merely to shut out the world and direct the mind toward heaven; but a modern meeting-house shuts out the heavens, while it crowds the world into still closer quarters.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Wall, Heaven, House

  Henry David Thoreau, Joseph O. Valentine, Thoreau Society (2001). “Thoreau on Land: Nature's Canvas”, p.37, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• The walls that fence our fields, as well as modern Rome, and not less the Parthenon itself, are all built of ruins.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Wall, Rome, Fields

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.179, Xist Publishing

• Ancient history has an air of antiquity. It should be more modern. It is written as if the specator should be thinking of the backside of the picture on the wall, or as if the author expected that the dead would be his readers, and wished to detail to them their own experience.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Wall, Thinking, Air

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.549, Simon and Schuster

• Deep are the foundations of sincerity. Even stone walls have their foundation below the frost.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Wall, Foundation, Frost

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.234, Xist Publishing

• I live in the angle of a leaden wall, into whose composition was poured a little alloy of bell-metal. Often, in the repose of my mid-day, there reaches my ears a confused tintinnabulum from without. It is the noise of my contemporaries.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Wall, Confused, Ears

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.190, Simon and Schuster

• But it is rather derogatory that your dwelling-place should be only a neighborhood to a great city,--to live on an inclined plane.I do not like their cities and forts, with their morning and evening guns, and sails flapping in one's eye. I want a whole continent to breathe in, and a good deal of solitude and silence, such as all Wall Street cannot buy,--nor Broadway with its wooden pavement. I must live along the beach, on the southern shore, which looks directly out to sea,--and see what that great parade of water means, that dashes and roars, and has not yet wet me, as long as I have lived.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Beach, Morning, Wall

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Familiar Letters (Annotated Edition)”, p.59, Jazzybee Verlag

• Routine is a ground to stand on, a wall to retreat to; we cannot draw on our boots without bracing ourselves against it.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Wall, Routine, Boots

  Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.17, Courier Corporation

• I knew that the wall was the main thing in Quebec, and had cost a great deal of money.... In fact, these are the only remarkable walls we have in North America, though we have a good deal of Virginia fence, it is true.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Wall, Virginia, America

  Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Excursions and Poems : The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, Volume V (of 20)”, p.73, HOUGHTON MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

• If one doubts whether Grecian valor and patriotism are not a fiction of the poets, he may go to Athens and see still upon the walls of the temple of Minerva the circular marks made by the shields taken from the enemy in the Persian war, which were suspended there. We have not far to seek for living and unquestionable evidence. The very dust takes shape and confirms some story which we had read.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Wall, War, Taken

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.178, Xist Publishing

• The cart before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful. Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must bestripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living laid for a foundation.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Beautiful, Horse, Wall

• The night in prison was novel and interesting enough.... I found that even here there was a history and a gossip which never circulated beyond the walls of the jail. Probably this is the only house in the town where verses are composed, which are afterward printed in a circular form, but not published. I was shown quite a long list of verses which were composed by some young men who had been detected in an attempt to escape, who avenged themselves by singing them.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Wall, Night, Men

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