“I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both. I love the wild not less than the good.”

—  Henry David Thoreau , book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and…" by Henry David Thoreau?
Henry David Thoreau photo
Henry David Thoreau 385
1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitio… 1817–1862

Related quotes

Julian (emperor) photo

“I feel awe of the gods, I love, I revere, I venerate them, and in short have precisely the same feelings towards them as one would have towards kind masters or teachers or fathers or guardians or any beings of that sort.”

Julian (emperor) (331–363) Roman Emperor, philosopher and writer

"To the Cynic Heracleios" in The Works of the Emperor Julian (1913) edited by W. Heinemann, Vol. II, p. 93
General sources

B.K.S. Iyengar photo

“When I still find some parts of my body that I have not found before, I tell myself, yes I am progressing scientifically… I don't stretch my body as if it is an object. I do yoga from the self towards the body, not the other way around.”

B.K.S. Iyengar (1918–2014) Indian yoga teacher and scholar

Source: BBC News "India yoga guru BKS Iyengar dies"

Alan Moore photo

“I think these will both still be with us, but fascism becomes less and less possible. We have to accept that we are moving towards some sort of anarchy.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

De Abaitua interview (1998)
Context: We only know the world as we have lived in it. A lot of things we thought were givens have turned out to be local and temporary phenomena. Capitalism and communism felt like they were always going to be around, but it turns out they were just two ways of ordering an industrial society. If you were looking for more fundamental human political poles, you’d take anarchy and fascism, for my money. Which are not dependent upon economic trends because they are both a bit mad. One of them is complete abdication of individual responsibility into the collective, and one of them absolute responsibility for the individual. I think these will both still be with us, but fascism becomes less and less possible. We have to accept that we are moving towards some sort of anarchy.

Gerard Manley Hopkins photo

“I find myself both as man and as myself something more determined and distinctive, at pitch, more distinctive and higher pitched than anything else I see.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

Comments on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola

Christopher Hitchens photo

“America is actually the country to which people came in the most of a hurry, to try and find if that life could really be lived as a society. Some of them came to practice their religion freely. Many came to escape from persecution by other religions. Some came to be free from religion altogether, and that's why the Constitution is godless and doesn't mention the word, but it was not written by atheists. It was written by democratic theists and secularists, and that's why the meeting at Philadelphia, which decided these matters and decides them still for us, was a godless one, if not an atheist one. And that's why I think modern America should be a lot more anti-religious than it is. It should pay less respect, and make much less reverence toward religion, than its mass media… presently do.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2000s, 2000, "Hostility Of America to Religion" (2000)

“I'm still prone to periods of isolation, still more fearful of the world out there and more averse to pleasure and risk than I'd like to be; I still direct more energy toward controlling and minimizing appetites than toward indulging them.”

Caroline Knapp (1959–2002) American writer

Source: Appetites: Why Women Want

Henri Matisse photo

“From the moment I held the box of colors in my hands, I knew this was my life. I threw myself into it like a beast that plunges towards the thing it loves.”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist
F. Scott Fitzgerald photo

“All life is just a progression toward, and then a recession from, one phrase— 'I love you.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Offshore Pirate

Quoted, Short Stories
Source: The Offshore Pirate

Aldo Capitini photo

“We approach one another as if we were separate entities and see the other only from a limited point of view – not as part of us; we do not open ourselves to others with complete faith. When we first encounter objects or persons we think, because of this feeling of separateness, that they are just as we find them and nothing else. But if my attitude towards this person is of love, interest, oneness, then I will lose that first impression of having accidentally found them and will grow beyond my limitations towards something at once more intimate and more vast.”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist

Hymn

Paul Gauguin photo

“I love Brittany; I find wildness and primitiveness there. When my wooden shoes ring on this granite, I hear the muffled, dull, and powerful tone which I try to achieve in painting.”

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist artist

Source: 1870s - 1880s, The Writings of a Savage (1996), p. 109: in a letter to a friend, c. 1886

Related topics