The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, Volume 4Houghton, 1906 |
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appeared ashore Atlantic bank Barnstable County bayberry beach beach-grass blackfish blow boat Boston called Cape Cod Captain Carlyle church clam coast commonly Concord distance Eastham England feet fish Fugitive Slave Law half harbor head hear heard hero hills human hundred inhabitants Island John Brown justice labor land least length light lighthouse live looked mackerel man's Massachusetts merely miles morning Mourt's Relation nature Nauset Nauset Lights neighbors never night ocean once Pamet River perchance perhaps Plymouth pond Provincetown Provincetown Harbor respect rocks rods round sail sailors sand sand-hills schooner seen shipwrecked shore shrub oaks side slaveholder slavery sometimes speak standing stone storm tell things thought tide tion told town trees Truro truth vessel voyage walk waves Wellfleet wind wood words wrecked wrecker
Popular passages
Page 358 - It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.
Page 376 - Thus the State never intentionally confronts a man's sense, intellectual or moral but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a multitude? They only can force me who obey a higher law than I.
Page 356 - I HEARTILY accept the motto, — "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe, — "That government is best which governs not at all;" and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.
Page 356 - This American government, — what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will.
Page 370 - Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. The proper place to-day, the only place which Massachusetts has provided for her freer and less...
Page 186 - Blow, blow, thou winter wind, Thou art not so unkind As man's ingratitude ; Thy tooth is not so keen, Because thou art not seen, Although thy breath be rude.
Page 359 - NOT a drum was heard, not a funeral note, As his corse to the ramparts we hurried ; Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot O'er the grave where our hero we buried.
Page 360 - ... officeholders — serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the Devil, without intending it, as God. A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it. A wise man will only be useful as a man, and will not submit to be "clay...
Page 357 - But it is not the less necessary for this; for the people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its din, to satisfy that idea of government which they have. Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage. It is excellent, we must all allow. Yet this government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way.
Page 440 - I wish to say, furthermore, that you had better — all you people at the South — prepare yourselves for a settlement of this question, that must come up for settlement sooner than you are prepared for it. The sooner you are prepared the better. You may dispose of me very easily, — I am nearly disposed of now ; but this question is still to be settled, — this negro question I mean ; the end of that is not yet.