A Quote by Henry David Thoreau
The chickadee and nuthatch are more inspiring society than statesmen and philosophers, and we shall return to these last as to more vulgar companions.
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Statesmen think in terms of history and view society as an organism. Prophets are different since they believe absolute aims can be achieved in the foreseeable future. More people have been killed by crusaders than by statesmen.
The last thing abandoned by a party is its phraseology, because among political parties, as elsewhere, the vulgar make the language, and the vulgar abandon more easily the ideas that have been instilled into it than the words that it has learnt.
It is of far more important that a man shall play something himself, even if he plays it badly, than that he shall go with hundreds of companions to see someone else play well.
The writers of books are companions in one's life and, as such, are often more interesting than other companions.
Society is a republic. When an individual endeavors to lift himself above his fellows, he is dragged down by the mass, either by means of ridicule or of calumny. No one shall be more virtuous or more intellectually gifted than others. Whoever, by the irresistable force of genius, rises above the common herd is certain to be ostracized by society, which will pursue him with such merciless derision and detraction that at last he will be compelled to retreat into the solitude of his thoughts.
A few more years shall roll,
A few more seasons come;
And we shall be with those that rest,
Asleep within the tomb.
A few more storms shall beat
On this wild rocky shore;
And we shall be where tempests cease,
And surges swell no more.
A few more struggles here,
A few more partings o'er,
A few more toils, a few more tears,
And we shall weep no more.
Then, O my Lord, prepare
My soul for that blest day;
Oh, wash me in Thy precious blood,
And take my sins away.
The ancient Greek philosophers were blonde and blue-eyed and, even then, talked about how their race was mixed with others and how this affected their society negatively. When there were no more natural blondes and no more blue eyes in Greece, they incidentally stopped producing great philosophers.
Welders make more money than philosophers. We need more welders and less philosophers.
We were promised a society of philosophers. But the Blogosphere is looking more and more like a nation of ankle-biters.
Even the wisdom of God hath not suggested more pressing motives, more powerful incentives to charity, than these, that we shall be judged by it at the last dreadful day.
The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. He knows much more of the fierce variety and uncompromising divergences of men…In a large community, we can choose our companions. In a small community, our companions are chosen for us. Thus in all extensive and highly civilized society groups come into existence founded upon sympathy, and shut out the real world more sharply than the gates of a monastery. There is nothing really narrow about the clan; the thing which is really narrow is the clique.
After all, I long to be in America again, nay, if I can go home to return no more to Europe, it seems to me that I shall ever enjoy more peace of mind, and even Physical comfort than I can meet with in any portion of the world beside.
Warned by the disaster of the last great war, the statesmen of all nations have been taking measures to prevent the return of another such calamity.
You will find the Americans much as the Greeks found the Romans: great, big, vulgar, bustling people more vigorous than we are and also more idle, with more unspoiled virtues but also more corrupt.
During the last times, men will be lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God. When you think of our sports-driven society, and our media-driven society, and our leisure-driven society, then you understand we are living in the last days.
And so we shall have to do more than register and more than vote; we shall have to create leaders who embody virtues we can respect, who have moral and ethical principles we can applaud with enthusiasm.
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