The secret of culture is to learn, that a few great points steadily reappear, alike in the poverty of the obscurest farm, and in t...he miscellany of metropolitan life, and that these few are alone to be regarded,--the escape from all false ties; courage to be what we are; and love what is simple and beautiful; independence and cheerful relation, these are the essentials,--these, and the wish to serve,--to add somewhat to the well-being of men.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The essence of the modern state is that the universal be bound up with the complete freedom of its particular members and with pri...vate well-being, that thus the interests of family and civil society must concentrate themselves on the state.... It is only when both these moments subsist in their strength that the state can be regarded as articulated and genuinely organized.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is well known, that the best productions of the best human intellects, are generally regarded by those intellects as mere immat...ure freshman exercises, wholly worthless in themselves, except as initiatives for entering the great University of God after death.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Most observers of the French Revolution, especially the clever and noble ones, have explained it as a life-threatening and contagi...ous illness. They have remained standing with the symptoms and have interpreted these in manifold and contrary ways. Some have regarded it as a merely local ill. The most ingenious opponents have pressed for castration. They well noticed that this alleged illness is nothing other than the crisis of beginning puberty.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All men are somewhat ridiculous and grotesque, just because they are men; and in this respect artists might well be regarded as ma...n multiplied by two. So it is, was, and shall be.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Passing over the earlier Continental poets, since we are bound to the pleasant archipelago of English poetry, Chaucer's is the fir...st name after that misty weather in which Ossian lived, which can detain us long. Indeed, though he represents so different a culture and society, he may be regarded as in many respects the Homer of the English poets. Perhaps he is the youthfulest of them all. We return to him as to the purest well, the fountain farthest removed from the highway of desultory life. He is so natural and cheerful, compared with later poets, that we might almost regard him as the personification of spring.... It is still the poetry of youth and life, rather than of thought; and though the moral vein is obvious and constant, it has not yet banished the sun and daylight from his verse.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
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 »
Men are in the main alike, but they were made several in order that they might be various. If a low use is to be served, one man w...ill do nearly quite as well as another; if a high one, individual excellence is to be regarded.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is not enough that France should be regarded as a country which enjoys the remains of a freedom acquired long ago. If she is st...ill to count in the world--and if she does not intend to, she may as well perish--she must be seen by her own citizens and by all men as an ever-flowing source of liberty. There must not be a single genuine lover of freedom in the whole world who can have a valid reason for hating France.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... the struggle against sexism demands the destruction of the American state, and ... the immediate personal nature of sexism req...uires struggle against men who enforce that oppression as well as its institutions.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »