Friday, November 14, 2014

Some Thoreau quotes

A friend sent some quotes. This one is noteworthy, Thoreau is being skeptical, a good scientist:

12 J3, p. 56
[Between 4/19 and 4/26/1850]
"The oldest monuments of the white settlers hereabouts are probably some dilapited & now undistinguished stone walls--laid long before Philip's war--not houses certainly perhaps not cellars--but old unhonored stone walls & ditches-- But it is difficult to find one well authenticated. I respect a stone wall therefore."

3 comments :

Tim MacSweeney said...

"Most men would feel insulted, if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now." Life Without Principle (1863)
"The Indian...stands free and unconstrained in Nature, is her inhabitant and not her guest, and wears her easily and gracefully. But the civilized man has the habits of the house. His house is a prison."
April 26, 1841

Tim MacSweeney said...

I sometimes see well-preserved walls running straight through the midst of high & old woods—built of course when the soil was cultivated many years ago—and am surprised to see slight stones still lying one upon another as the builder placed them while this huge oak has grown up from a chance acorn on the soil.
—Henry David Thoreau, Journals, 9 November 1850
http://artdurkee.blogspot.com/2009/06/new-england-stone-walls.html

Tim MacSweeney said...

DHT's buddy's inspirational "crude" stone wall:
http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-crude-wall-in-concord-ma.html