Journal 01, 1837-1846: The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, Volume 07 (of 20)Thoreau, Henry David
Philosophy
Journal 01, 1837-1846: The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, Volume 07 (of 20)
Thoreau, Henry David
Authors, American -- 19th century -- Diaries; Thoreau, Henry David, 1817-1862 -- Diaries
The best and bravest deed is that which the whole man—heart, lungs,
hands, fingers, and toes—at any time prompts. Each hanger-on in the
purlieus of the camp, must strike his standard at the signal from the
Prætorian tent, and fall into the line of march; but if a single sutler
delay to make up his pack, then suspect the fates and consult the omens
again. This is the meaning of integrity; this is to be an integer, and
not a fraction. Be even for all virtuous ends, but odd for all vice. Be
a perfect power, so that any of your roots multiplied into itself may
give the whole again.
* * * * *
Beauty is compared, not measured, for it is the creature of proportions,
not of size. Size must be subdued to it. It is hard for a tall or a
short person to be beautiful.
To graft the Persian lilac on the ash, is as if you were to splice the
thigh-bones of the Venus de Medici.
* * * * *
Friends will have to be introduced each time they meet. They will
be eternally strange to one another, and when they have mutually
appropriated their value for the last hour, they will go and gather
a new measure of strangeness for the next. They are like two boughs
crossed in the wood, which play backwards and forwards upon one another
in the wind, and only wear into each other, but never the sap of the
one flows into the pores of the other, for then the wind would no more
draw from them those strains which enchanted the wood. They are not two
united, but rather one divided.
* * * * *
Of all strange and unaccountable things this journalizing is the
strangest. It will allow nothing to be predicated of it; its good is not
good, nor its bad bad. If I make a huge effort to expose my innermost
and richest wares to light, my counter seems cluttered with the meanest
homemade stuffs; but after months or years I may discover the wealth
of India, and whatever rarity is brought overland from Cathay, in
that confused heap, and what perhaps seemed a festoon of dried apple
or pumpkin will prove a string of Brazilian diamonds, or pearls from
Coromandel.
* * * * *
Men lie behind the barrier of a relation as effectually concealed as the
landscape by a mist; and when at length some unforeseen accident throws
me into a new attitude to them, I am astounded, as if for the first time
I saw the sun on the hillside. They lie out before me like a new order
of things. As, when the master meets his pupil as a man, then first do
we stand under the same heavens, and master and pupil alike go down the
resistless ocean stream together.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account