Henry David Thoreau: Citáty anglicky (strana 2)
Henry David Thoreau byl americký autor a přírodovědec. Citáty anglicky.“I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.”
Zdroj: On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
“As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.”
Zdroj: Walden
“If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.”
Zdroj: I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau
“Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.”
Zdroj: Walden
Life Without Principle (1863)
Kontext: If a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. As if a town had no interest in its forests but to cut them down!
Life Without Principle (1863)
Kontext: 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, the Parnassian streams, and not the town-sewers. There is inspiration, that gossip which comes to the ear of the attentive mind from the courts of heaven. There is the profane and stale revelation of the bar-room and the police court. The same ear is fitted to receive both communications. Only the character of the hearer determines to which it shall be open, and to which closed. I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality.
“You must get your living by loving.”
Life Without Principle (1863)
Kontext: I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living. All great enterprises are self-supporting. The poet, for instance, must sustain his body by his poetry, as a steam planing-mill feeds its boilers with the shavings it makes. You must get your living by loving.
“I am enjoying existence as much as ever, and regret nothing.”
His last letter, to Myron Benton (31 March 1862) http://www.walden.org/Institute/thoreau/writings/correspondence/1862_03_21_Benton.htm
Kontext: You ask particularly after my health. I suppose that I have not many months to live; but, of course, I know nothing about it. I may add that I am enjoying existence as much as ever, and regret nothing.
Civil Disobedience (1849)
Kontext: To speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it. After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule, is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience? — in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.
“Men reverence one another, not yet God.”
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Sunday
Kontext: It seems to me that the god that is commonly worshipped in civilized countries is not at all divine, though he bears a divine name, but is the overwhelming authority and respectability of mankind combined. Men reverence one another, not yet God. If I thought that I could speak with discrimination and impartiality of the nations of Christendom, I should praise them, but it tasks me too much. They seem to be the most civil and humane, but I may be mistaken.
“The language of Friendship is not words, but meanings.”
Zdroj: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.”
Varianta: A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
Zdroj: Walden
“This world is but canvas to our imaginations.”
Varianta: The world is but a canvas to the imagination.
Zdroj: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Wednesday
“What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?”
Zdroj: Letter to Harrison Blake (20 May 1860); published in Familiar Letters (1865)
Kontext: What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on? — If you cannot tolerate the planet that it is on?
Kontext: Men and boys are learning all kinds of trades but how to make men of themselves. They learn to make houses; but they are not so well housed, they are not so contented in their houses, as the woodchucks in their holes. What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on? — If you cannot tolerate the planet that it is on? Grade the ground first. If a man believes and expects great things of himself, it makes no odds where you put him, or what you show him … he will be surrounded by grandeur. He is in the condition of a healthy and hungry man, who says to himself, — How sweet this crust is!
“… for my greatest skill has been to want but little.”
Zdroj: Walden