Some years ago, the State met me in behalf of the Church, and commanded me to pay a certain sum toward the support of a clergyman ...whose preaching my father attended, but never I myself. "Pay," it said, "or be locked up in the jail." I declined to pay. But, unfortunately, another man saw fit to pay it. I did not see why the schoolmaster should be taxed to support the priest, and not the priest the schoolmaster; for I was not the State's schoolmaster, but I supported myself by voluntary subscription. I did not see why the lyceum should not present its tax-bill, and have the State to back its demand, as well as the Church. However, at the request of the selectmen, I condescended to make some such statement as this in writing:M"Know all men by these presents, that I, Henry Thoreau, do not wish to be regarded as a member of any incorporated society which I have not joined." This I gave to the town clerk, and he has it. The State, having thus learned that I did not wish to be regarded as a member of that church, has never made a like demand on me since; though it said that it must adhere to its original presumption that time. If I had known how to name them, I should then have signed off in detail from all the societies which I never signed on to; but I did not know where to find a complete list.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We boast that we belong to the Nineteenth Century and are making the most rapid strides of any nation. But consider how little thi...s village does for its own culture. I do not wish to flatter my townsmen, nor to be flattered by them, for that will not advance either of us. We need to be provoked,--goaded like oxen, as we are, into a trot. We have a comparatively decent system of common schools, schools for infants only; but excepting the half-starved Lyceum in the winter, and latterly the puny beginning of a library suggested by the State, no school for ourselves. We spend more on almost any article of bodily aliment or ailment than on our mental aliment. It is time that we had uncommon schools, that we did not leave off our education when we begin to be men and women. It is time that villages were universities, and their elder inhabitants the fellows of universities, with leisure--if they are, indeed, so well off--to pursue liberal studies the rest of their lives.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to vio...late in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap--let it be taught ...in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges;Mlet it be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs;Mlet it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and ...religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We love the indomitable bellicose patriotism that sets you apart; we love the national pride that guides your muscularly courageou...s race; we love the potent individualism that doesn't prevent you from opening your arms to individualists of every land, whether libertarians or anarchists.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The poetry of this one is called philosophical, of that one philological, of a third rhetorical, and so on. Which is then the poet...ic poetry?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The analytical writer observes the reader as he is; accordingly, he makes his calculation, sets his machine to make the appropriat...e effect on him. The synthetic writer constructs and creates his own reader; he does not imagine him as resting and dead, but lively and advancing toward him. He makes that which he had invented gradually take shape before the reader's eyes, or he tempts him to do the inventing for himself. He does not want to make a particular effect on him, but rather enters into a solemn relationship of innermost symphilosophy or sympoetry.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The whole history of modern poetry is a continuous commentary on the short text of philosophy: every art should become science, an...d every science should become art; poetry and philosophy should be united.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »