Complete Works, Volume 10

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Houghton Mifflin & Company, 1883

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Page 96 - But for those first affections, Those shadowy recollections, Which, be they what they may, Are yet the fountain light of all our day, Are yet a master light of all our seeing; Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake, To perish never...
Page 98 - Though love repine, and reason chafe, There came a voice without reply, — "Tis man's perdition to be safe, When for the truth he ought to die.
Page 229 - So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low, Thou must, The youth replies, / can.
Page 142 - ... lies in respecting the pupil. It is not for you to choose what he shall know, what he shall do. It is chosen and foreordained, and he only holds the key to his own secret. By your tampering and thwarting and too much governing he may be hindered from his end and kept out of his own. Respect the child. Wait and see the new product of Nature. Nature loves analogies, but not repetitions. Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.
Page 439 - ... as if Mr. Thoreau had better rights in his land than he. They felt, too, the superiority of character which addressed all men with a native authority. Indian relics abound in Concord, — arrow-heads, stone chisels, pestles, and fragments of pottery; and on the river-bank, large heaps of clam-shells and ashes mark spots which the savages frequented. These, and every circumstance touching the Indian, were important in his eyes. His visits to Maine were chiefly for love of the Indian. He had the...
Page 350 - If the assembly was disorderly, it was picturesque. Madmen, madwomen, men with beards, Dunkers, Muggletonians, Come-outers, Groaners, Agrarians, Seventh-day Baptists, Quakers, Abolitionists, Calvinists, Unitarians and Philosophers, — all came successively to the top, and seized their moment, if not their hour, wherein to chide, or pray, or preach, or protest.
Page 427 - ... books, and assured him that he, Thoreau, and not the librarian, was the proper custodian of these. In short, the President found the petitioner so formidable, and the rules getting to look so ridiculous, that he ended by giving him a privilege which in his hands proved unlimited thereafter. ' No truer American existed than Thoreau. His preference of his country and condition was genuine, and his aversation from English and European manners and tastes almost reached contempt.
Page 447 - The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length the middle-aged man concludes to build a wood-shed with them." "The locust z-ing." "Devil's-needles zigzagging along the Nut-Meadow brook." "Sugar is not so sweet to the palate as sound to the healthy ear.

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