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Henry David Thoreau (view source)
Revision as of 04:03, February 25, 2010
, 04:03, February 25, 2010no edit summary
{{cquote|"looking through the stars to see if I could see God behind them."
{{cquote|"looking through the stars to see if I could see God behind them."
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== Works ==
From ''A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers ''
<blockquote>
As yesterday and the historical ages are past, as the work of to-day is present, so some flitting perspectives, and demi-experiences of the life that is in nature are in time veritably future, or rather outside to time, perennial, young, divine, in the wind and rain which never die. [http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=ThoWeek.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=1&division=div1]
</blockquote>
From ''Walden'', Chapter XVIII:
<blockquote>
TO THE sick the doctors wisely recommend a change of air and scenery. Thank Heaven, here is not all the world. The buck-eye does not grow in New England, and the mocking-bird is rarely heard here. The wild goose is more of a cosmopolite than we; he breaks his fast in Canada, takes a luncheon in the Ohio, and plumes himself for the night in a southern bayou. Even the bison, to some extent, keeps pace with the seasons cropping the pastures of the Colorado only till a greener and sweeter grass awaits him by the Yellowstone. Yet we think that if rail fences are pulled down, and stone-walls piled up on our farms, bounds are henceforth set to our lives and our fates decided. If you are chosen town-clerk, forsooth, you cannot go to Tierra del Fuego this summer: but you may go to the land of infernal fire nevertheless. The universe is wider than our views of it. [http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/thoreau/walden/chapter18.html]
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From ''Resistance to Civil Government, or Civil Disobedience''
<blockquote>
I heartily accept the motto,—“That government is best which governs least”; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe—“That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which the will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government. The standing army is only an arm of the standing government. The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it. Witness the present Mexican war, the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government as their tool; for in the outset, the people would not have consented to this measure. [http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/thoreau/civiltext.html]
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==External Links==
==External Links==