Henry David Thoreau Quotations: RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY
The audience are never tired of hearing how far the wind carried some man, woman, or child, or family Bible, but they are immediately tired if you undertake to give them a scientific account of it.—Journal, 4 February 1852
The best man's spirit makes a fearful sprite to haunt his tomb. The ghost of a priest is no better than that of a highwayman.—Journal, 23 December 1841
The best philosophy untrue that aims
But to console man for his grievances.—"Natural History of Massachusetts"
The bigoted and sectarian forget that without religion or devotion of some kind nothing great was ever accomplished.—Journal, 27 July 1852
The Brahman never proposes courageously to assault evil, but patiently to starve it out. His active faculties are paralyzed by the idea of cast, of impassable limits, of destiny and the tyranny of time.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
The Deity would be reverenced, not feared.—Early Essays and Miscellanies
The earth song of the cricket! Before Christianity was, it is. Health, health, health, is the burden of its song.—Journal, 17 June 1852
The entertaining a single thought of a certain elevation makes all men of one religion. It is always some base alloy that creates the distinction of sects.—Journal, 8 August 1852
The fact is I am a mystic, a transcendentalist, and a natural philosopher to boot.—Journal, 5 March 1853
The farmer has always come to the field after some material thing: that is not what a philosopher goes there for.—Journal, 14 October 1857
