A Quote by Henry David Thoreau

When we want culture more than potatoes, and illumination more than sugar-plums, then the great resources of a world are taxed anddrawn out, and the result, or staple production, is, not slaves, nor operatives, but men,--those rare fruits called heroes, saints, poets, philosophers, and redeemers.

Henry David Thoreau

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Culture Fruits Great Heroes Illumination Men More Nor Out Plums Poets Potatoes Production Rare Resources Result Saints Staple Sugar Than Then Those Want World

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Henry David Thoreau
American - Author
July 12, 1817 - May 6, 1862

Nearly all men and women are poetical, to some extent, but very few can be called poets. There are great poets, small poets, and men and women who make verses. But all are not poets, nor even good versifiers. Poetasters are plentiful, but real poets are rare. Education can not make a poet, though it may polish and develop one.

Orson F. Whitney

If the United States haven't grown poets, on any scale of grandeur, it is certain that they import, print, and read more poetry than any equal number of people elsewhere -- probably more than the rest of the world combined. Poetry (like a grand personality) is a growth of many generations -- many rare combinations. To have great poets, there must be great audiences too.

Walt Whitman

Unless we consent to lack the common things which men call success, we shall hardly become heroes or saints, philosophers or poets.

John Lancaster Spalding

At the beginning of World War II the U.S. had a mere 600 or so first-class fighting aircraft. We rapidly overcame this short supply by turning out more than 90,000 planes a year. The question at the start of World War II was: Do we have enough funds to produce the required implements of war? The answer was No, we did not have enough money, nor did we have enough gold; but we did have more than enough resources. It was the available resources that enabled the US to achieve the high production and efficiency required to win the war. Unfortunately this is only considered in times of war.

Jacque Fresco

My whole shtick is that I want to contribute to New York's culture via restaurants, nightlife, whatever... but to be more conscious, more aware, more sustainable. It's more than just 'being responsible as a culture.' It's having an ethical chain of production.

Hannah Bronfman

Gout, unlike any other disease, kills more rich men than poor, more wise men than simple. Great kings, emperors, generals, admirals and philosophers have all died of gout.

Thomas Sydenham

We are so vain as to set the highest value upon those things to which nature has assigned the lowest place. What can be more coarse and rude in the mind than the precious metals, or more slavish and dirty than the people that dig and work them? And yet they defile our minds more than our bodies, and make the possessor fouler than the artificer of them. Rich men, in fine, are only the greater slaves.

Seneca the Younger

There is no talent so useful toward rising in the world, or which puts men more out of the reach of fortune, than that quality generally possessed by the dullest sort of men, and in common speech called discretion; a species of lower prudence, by the assistance of which, people of the meanest intellectuals, without any other qualification, pass through the world in great tranquillity, and with universal good treatment, neither giving nor taking offence.

Jonathan Swift

We seem to want mass production, but we must remember that men are individuals not to be satisfactorily dealt with in masses, and the making of men is more important than the production of things.

Ralph Washington Sockman

Climbing has so much more culture than all other activities put together. There is no culture in tennis, just a few names, a few dates. No big culture in soccer. But we have thousands of books, great philosophers, thinkers, painters.

Reinhold Messner

People help way more than we expect, way more than makes sense. But when you talk to people called heroes, they often say they did it for themselves. In one case, a hero said that the cost of not doing it is so great, the sense of shame, when he knew that he was strong enough, that the fear of not doing anything was more frightening than the fear of dying.

Amanda Ripley

Philosophy abounds more than philosophers, and learning more than learned men.

William Benton Clulow

There's more to me, more to the universe, than I suspected. Room for all the dreams I ever had, and all the nightmares...heroes in the gutters and in the mirror; saints in the frozen wasteland; fools and liars on the throne of wisdom, and hands reaching out in hunger that will never be filled.

Joan D. Vinge

So-called 'complex carbs' may actually represent a more significant threat to health than simple sugar in that they may not only raise blood sugar, but keep it elevated for a more prolonged period of time.

David Perlmutter

I think that the dark side of MFA programs is that they're generating more poets than the culture can absorb and there are more people writing poetry than possibly read it or can certainly earn a living around it.

Edward Hirsch

Rare almost as great poets, rarer, perhaps, than veritable saints and martyrs; are consummate men of business. A man, to be excellent in this way, requires a great knowledge of character, with that exquisite tact which feels unerringly the right moment when to act. A discreet rapidity must pervade all the movements of his thought and action. He must be singularly free from vanity, and is generally found to be an enthusiast who has the art to conceal his enthusiasm.

Arthur Helps

A Quote by Henry David Thoreau

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