Quotes Tagged "thoreau"

In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and the future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line. You will pardon some obscurities, for there are more secrets in my trade than in most men's, and yet not voluntarily kept, but inseparable from its very nature.
Tags: walden, thoreau, present, philosophy
In 1881, being on a visit to Boston, my wife and I found ourselves in the Parker House with the Ingersoll's, and went over to Charleston to hear him lecture. His subject was 'Some Mistakes of Moses,' and it was a memorable experience. Our lost leaders, -- Emerson, Thoreau, Theodore Parker, -- who had really spoken to disciples rather than to the nation, seemed to have contributed something to form this organ by which their voice could reach the people. Every variety of power was in this orator, -- logic and poetry, humor and imagination, simplicity and dramatic art, moral and boundless sympathy. The wonderful power which Washington's Attorney-general, Edmund Randolph, ascribed to Thomas Paine of insinuating his ideas equally into learned and unlearned had passed from Paine's pen to Ingersoll's tongue. The effect on the people was indescribable. The large theatre was crowded from pit to dome. The people were carried from plaudits of his argument to loud laughter at his humorous sentences, and his flexible voice carried the sympathies of the assembly with it, at times moving them to tears by his pathos. {Conway's thoughts on the great Robert Ingersoll}
Tags: wisdom, voice, truth, thoreau, thomas-paine, tears, sympathy, speech, some-mistakes-of-moses, simplicity, robert-ingersoll, robert-green-ingersoll, robert-g-ingersoll, respect, reason, ralph-waldo-emerson, ralph-emerson, ralph-e-emerson, praise, power, poetry, pathos, paine, orator, morality, mirth, memorable, love, logic, lecture, laughter, inspirational, ingersoll, imagination, humor, honor, henry-thoreau, henry-david-thoreau, henry-d-thoreau, friendship, emotion, emerson, boston, art, admiration
Do not seek so anxiously to be developed, to subject yourself to many influences to be played on; it is all dissipation. Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights.
Tags: thoreau, reading, progress, learning, knowledge, humility, education, dissipation, development
I realize that in giving birth, managing a household, raising a child, and composting potato peels in a city, I have learned some things about wildness that even Thoreau could not have known.
Tags: thoreau, outdoors, nature, naturalist, life, knowledge, education
What is a course of history or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, see what is before you, and walk on into futurity.
Tags: thoreau, reading, present, philosophy, future, books