Quotes from book
Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle
Henry David Thoreau

Life Without Principle is an essay by Henry David Thoreau that offers his program for a righteous livelihood. It was published in 1863.

Henry David Thoreau photo

“It is remarkable that among all the preachers there are so few moral teachers. The prophets are employed in excusing the ways of men.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)

Henry David Thoreau photo

“Merely to come into the world the heir of a fortune is not to be born, but to be still-born, rather. To be supported by the charity of friends, or a government-pension, — provided you continue to breathe, — by whatever fine synonymes you describe these relations, is to go into the almshouse.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)

Henry David Thoreau photo

“Howitt says of the man who found the great nugget which weighed twenty-eight pounds, at the Bendigo diggings in Australia: — "He soon began to drink; got a horse, and rode all about, generally at full gallop, and, when he met people, called out to inquire if they knew who he was, and then kindly informed them that he was 'the bloody wretch that had found the nugget.' At last he rode full speed against a tree, and nearly knocked his brains out." I think, however, there was no danger of that, for he had already knocked his brains out against the nugget.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)

Henry David Thoreau photo

“Where there is a lull of truth, an institution springs up. But the truth blows right on over it, nevertheless, and at length blows it down.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)

Henry David Thoreau photo

“When our life ceases to be inward and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip. We rarely meet a man who can tell us any news which he has not read in a newspaper, or been told by his neighbor; and, for the most part, the only difference between us and our fellow is, that he has seen the newspaper, or been out to tea, and we have not. In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post-office.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)

Henry David Thoreau photo

“The finest manners in the world are awkwardness and fatuity, when contrasted with a finer intelligence.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)

Henry David Thoreau photo

“To speak impartially, the best men that I know are not serene, a world in themselves. For the most part, they dwell in forms, and flatter and study effect only more finely than the rest. We select granite for the underpinning of our houses and barns; we build fences of stone; but we do not ourselves rest on an underpinning of granitic truth, the lowest primitive rock. Our sills are rotten.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)

Henry David Thoreau photo

“A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)
Context: I did not know that mankind were suffering for want of gold. I have seen a little of it. I know that it is very malleable, but not so malleable as wit. A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.

Henry David Thoreau photo

“I hardly know an intellectual man, even, who is so broad and truly liberal that you can think aloud in his society.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)
Context: I hardly know an intellectual man, even, who is so broad and truly liberal that you can think aloud in his society. Most with whom you endeavor to talk soon come to a stand against some institution in which they appear to hold stock, — that is, some particular, not universal, way of viewing things.

Henry David Thoreau photo

“Do we call this the land of the free? What is it to be free from King George and continue the slaves of King Prejudice?”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)
Context: Do we call this the land of the free? What is it to be free from King George and continue the slaves of King Prejudice? What is it to be born free and not to live free? What is the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom? Is it a freedom to be slaves, or a freedom to be free, of which we boast? We are a nation of politicians, concerned about the outmost defences only of freedom. It is our children's children who may perchance be really free.

Henry David Thoreau photo

“What is called politics is comparatively something so superficial and inhuman, that, practically, I have never fairly recognized that it concerns me at all.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)
Context: What is called politics is comparatively something so superficial and inhuman, that, practically, I have never fairly recognized that it concerns me at all. The newspapers, I perceive, devote some of their columns specially to politics or government without charge; and this, one would say, is all that saves it; but, as I love literature, and, to some extent, the truth also, I never read those columns at any rate. I do not wish to blunt my sense of right so much.

Henry David Thoreau photo

“With respect to a true culture and manhood, we are essentially provincial still, not metropolitan”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)
Context: With respect to a true culture and manhood, we are essentially provincial still, not metropolitan, — mere Jonathans. We are provincial, because we do not find at home our standards, — because we do not worship truth, but the reflection of truth, — because we are warped and narrowed by an exclusive devotion to trade and commerce and manufactures and agriculture and the like, which are but means, and not the end.

Henry David Thoreau photo

“Is it a freedom to be slaves, or a freedom to be free, of which we boast? We are a nation of politicians, concerned about the outmost defences only of freedom. It is our children's children who may perchance be really free.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)
Context: Do we call this the land of the free? What is it to be free from King George and continue the slaves of King Prejudice? What is it to be born free and not to live free? What is the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom? Is it a freedom to be slaves, or a freedom to be free, of which we boast? We are a nation of politicians, concerned about the outmost defences only of freedom. It is our children's children who may perchance be really free.

Henry David Thoreau photo

“It is so hard to forget what it is worse than useless to remember! If I am to be a thoroughfare, I prefer that it be of the mountain-brooks, the Parnassian streams, and not the town-sewers.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)
Context: It is so hard to forget what it is worse than useless to remember! If I am to be a thoroughfare, I prefer that it be of the mountain-brooks, the Parnassian streams, and not the town-sewers. There is inspiration, that gossip which comes to the ear of the attentive mind from the courts of heaven. There is the profane and stale revelation of the bar-room and the police court. The same ear is fitted to receive both communications. Only the character of the hearer determines to which it shall be open, and to which closed. I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality.

Henry David Thoreau photo

“The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)
Context: The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse. If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself.

Henry David Thoreau photo

“Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)
Context: I will not talk about people a thousand miles off, but come as near home as I can. As the time is short, I will leave out all the flattery, and retain all the criticism.
Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives.

Henry David Thoreau photo

“Read not the Times. Read the Eternities. Conventionalities are at length as bad as impurities. Even the facts of science may dust the mind by their dryness, unless they are in a sense effaced each morning, or rather rendered fertile by the dews of fresh and living truth. Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)
Context: Read not the Times. Read the Eternities. Conventionalities are at length as bad as impurities. Even the facts of science may dust the mind by their dryness, unless they are in a sense effaced each morning, or rather rendered fertile by the dews of fresh and living truth. Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven. Yes, every thought that passes through the mind helps to wear and tear it, and to deepen the ruts, which, as in the streets of Pompeii, evince how much it has been used. How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate, whether we had better know them, — had better let their peddling-carts be driven, even at the slowest trot or walk, over that bridge of glorious span by which we trust to pass at last from the farthest brink of time to the nearest shore of eternity! Have we no culture, no refinement, — but skill only to live coarsely and serve the Devil? — to acquire a little worldly wealth, or fame, or liberty, and make a false show with it, as if we were all husk and shell, with no tender and living kernel to us? Shall our institutions be like those chestnut-burs which contain abortive nuts, perfect only to prick the fingers?

Henry David Thoreau photo

“Why should we not meet, not always as dyspeptics, to tell our bad dreams, but sometimes as eupeptics, to congratulate each other on the ever glorious morning? I do not make an exorbitant demand, surely.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)
Context: Politics is, as it were, the gizzard of society, full of grit and gravel, and the two political parties are its two opposite halves, — sometimes split into quarters, it may be, which grind on each other. Not only individuals, but States, have thus a confirmed dyspepsia, which expresses itself, you can imagine by what sort of eloquence. Thus our life is not altogether a forgetting, but also, alas! to a great extent, a remembering of that which we should never have been conscious of, certainly not in our waking hours. Why should we not meet, not always as dyspeptics, to tell our bad dreams, but sometimes as eupeptics, to congratulate each other on the ever glorious morning? I do not make an exorbitant demand, surely.

Henry David Thoreau photo

“When I observe that there are different ways of surveying, my employer commonly asks which will give him the most land, not which is most correct.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)
Context: As for my own business, even that kind of surveying which I could do with most satisfaction my employers do not want. They would prefer that I should do my work coarsely and not too well, ay, not well enough. When I observe that there are different ways of surveying, my employer commonly asks which will give him the most land, not which is most correct.

Henry David Thoreau photo

“The title wise is, for the most part, falsely applied.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)
Context: The title wise is, for the most part, falsely applied. How can one be a wise man, if he does not know any better how to live than other men? — if he is only more cunning and intellectually subtle?