Men must speak English who can write Sanskrit; they must speak a modern language who write, perchance, an ancient and universal one. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I do not know where to find in any literature, whether ancient or modern, any adequate account of that Nature with which… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The walls that fence our fields, as well as modern Rome, and not less the Parthenon itself, are all built of ruins. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
For what are the classics but the noblest thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
As with our colleges, so with a hundred "modern improvements"; there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad-Gita, in comparison with which our modern… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The Oriental philosophy approaches easily loftier themes than the modern aspires to; and no wonder if it sometimes prattle about them. It… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
For my part, I would rather look toward Rutland than Jerusalem. Rutland,--modern town,--land of ruts,--trivial and worn,--not toosacred,--with no holy sepulchre, but… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
As I drew a still fresher soil about the rows with my hoe, I disturbed the ashes of unchronicled nations who in… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I lately met with an old volume from a London bookshop, containing the Greek Minor Poets, and it was a pleasure to… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Ancient history has an air of antiquity. It should be more modern. It is written as if the specator should be thinking… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
In Homer and Chaucer there is more of the innocence and serenity of youth than in the more modern and moral poets.… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
How little do the most wonderful inventions of modern times detain us. They insult nature. Every machine, or particular application, seems a… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
A temple, you know, was anciently "an open place without a roof," whose walls served merely to shut out the world and… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
If ever I did a man any goodof course it was something exceptional and insignificant compared with the good or evil which I am… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“Men say they know many things; But lo! they have taken wings, — The arts and sciences, And a thousand appliances; The wind that… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or back gammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“This spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
As for doing good; that is one of the professions which is full. Moreover I have tried it fairly and, strange as it may… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
A traveler who looks at things with an impartial eye may see what the oldest inhabitant has not observed. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post office. You may depend on it, that the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The still youthful energies of the globe have only to be directed in their proper channel. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Concord's little arch does not span all our fate, nor is what transpires under it law for the universe. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
