Culture Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

What we call wildness is a civilization other than our own.

— Henry David Thoreau

Tradition is a more interrupted and feebler memory.

— Henry David Thoreau

Simplicity is the peak of civilization.

— Henry David Thoreau

...how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!

— Henry David Thoreau

The best thing a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those schemes…

— Henry David Thoreau

It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious.

— Henry David Thoreau

Alas! the culture of an Irishman is an enterprise to be undertaken with a sort of moral bog hoe.

— Henry David Thoreau

The culture of the hop ... so analagous to the culture and uses of the grape, may afford a theme for future poets.

— Henry David Thoreau

A man will not need to study history to find out what is best for his own culture.

— Henry David Thoreau

I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute Freedom and Wildness, as contrasted with a Freedom and Culture merely civil,…

— Henry David Thoreau

If we live in the Nineteenth Century, why should we not enjoy the advantages which the Nineteenth Century offers? Why should our…

— Henry David Thoreau

The best books are not read even by those who are called good readers. What does our Concord culture amount to? There…

— Henry David Thoreau

“The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind…

— Henry David Thoreau

The customs of some savage nations might, perchance, be profitably imitated by us, for they at least go through the semblance of…

— Henry David Thoreau

Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children,…

— Henry David Thoreau

When we want culture more than potatoes, and illumination more than sugar-plums, then the great resources of a world are taxed anddrawn…

— Henry David Thoreau

Paper is cheap, and authors need not now erase one book before they write another. Instead of cultivating the earth for wheat…

— Henry David Thoreau

Compared with this simple, fibrous life, our civilized history appears the chronicle of debility, of fashion, and the arts of luxury. But…

— Henry David Thoreau

“We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven. We have adopted Christianity…

— Henry David Thoreau

“Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children,…

— Henry David Thoreau

But there are spirits of a yet more liberal culture, to whom no simplicity is barren. There are not only stately pines,…

— Henry David Thoreau

Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downwards through the mud and slush of opinion and tradition, and pride…

— Henry David Thoreau

The civilized nations--Greece, Rome, England--have been sustained by the primitive forests which anciently rotted where they stand. They survive as long as…

— Henry David Thoreau

In society, in the best institutions of men, it is easy to detect a certain precocity. When we should still be growing…

— Henry David Thoreau

When it was proposed to me to go abroad, rub oft some rust, and better my condition in a worldly sense, I…

— Henry David Thoreau