Quote #154
We do not live for idle amusement. I would not run round a corner to see the world blow up.
More from Henry David Thoreau
- We may well be ashamed to tell what things we have read or heard in our day. I do not know why my news should be so trivial, - considering …
- It is so hard to forget what it is worse than useless to remember! If I am to be a thoroughfare, I prefer that it be of the mountain-brooks…
- I do not know but it is too much to read one newspaper a week. I have tried it recently, and for so long it seems to me that I have not dwe…
- Read not the Times. Read the Eternities. Conventionalities are at length as bad as impurities. Even the facts of science may dust the mind …
- When our life ceases to be inward and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip. We rarely meet a man who can tell us any news whi…
- Do we call this the land of the free? What is it to be free from King George and continue the slaves of King Prejudice? What is it to be bo…
- While there are manners and compliments we do not meet, we do not teach one another the lessons of honesty and sincerity that the brutes do…
- With respect to a true culture and manhood, we are essentially provincial still, not metropolitan, - mere Jonathans. We are provincial, bec…