Emerson and Thoreau Quotes
“To believe in your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your heart, is true for all men, - that is genius” (Emerson 533)
“There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his potion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till” (Emerson 533).
“What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text in the face and behavior of children, babes, and even brutes” (Emerson 534).
“Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist” (Emerson 535).
“It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude” (Emerson 536).
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers divine. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do” (Emerson 537).
“To be great is to be misunderstood” (Emerson 538).
“ The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure that it is profane to seek to interpose helps” (Emerson 541).
“Man is timid and apologetic. He is no longer upright. He dares not say ‘I think,’ ‘I am,” but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time with them” (Emerson 541).
“It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance , - a new respect for the divinity in man, - must work a revolution in all the offices and relations of men; in their religion; in their education; in their pursuits; their modes of living; their associations; in their property; in their speculative views” (Emerson 545).
“Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man” (Emerson 545).
“As our Religion, our Education, our Art look abroad, so does our spirit of society” (Emerson 547).
“[Men] measure their esteem of each other, by what each has, and not by what each is. But a cultivated man becomes ashamed of his property, ashamed of what he has, out of new respect for his being” (Emerson 549).
“Where I Lived, and What I Lived For” Quotes
What Emerson laid out in theory, Thoreau put into practice. Examine the following quotes and give concrete examples that demonstrate these quotes.
“Man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone” (Thoreau 887).
“But I would say to my fellows, once and for all, As long as possible live free and uncommitted”(Thoreau 888).
“We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep” (Thoreau 891). (getting up in the morning – always changing)
“ I went into the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not when, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived…. I wanted to live deep and such out all the marrow of life…” (Thoreau 892).
“When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence – that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of reality” (Thoreau 895).
“Men say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a thousand stitches to-day to save nine to-morrow” (Thoreau 893).
“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand” (Thoreau 892).
8. “Time is but a stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is” (Thoreau 896).