Henry David Thoreau

Name: Walden — Chapter VIII: The Village
Author: Henry David Thoreau

Walden — Chapter VIII: The Village (1893)

Summary

“Walden — Chapter VIII: The Village”, published in 1893, is a work by Henry David Thoreau. It explores elements such as outskirts, gossip and gauntlet.

Quotes from Walden — Chapter VIII: The Village (Henry David Thoreau)

Henry David Thoreau, Walden — Chapter VIII: The Village (1893)

“ Sometimes, after coming home thus late in a dark and muggy night, when my feet felt the path which my eyes could not see, dreaming and absent-minded all the way, until I was aroused by having to raise my hand to lift the latch, I have not been able to recall a single step of my walk, and I have thought that perhaps my body would find its way home if its master should forsake it, as the hand finds its way to the mouth without assistance. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Henry David Thoreau, Walden — Chapter VIII: The Village (1893)

“ These are the coarsest mills, in which all gossip is first rudely digested or cracked up before it is emptied into finer and more delicate hoppers within doors. I observed that the vitals of the village were the grocery, the bar-room, the post-office, and the bank; and, as a necessary part of the machinery, they kept a bell, a big gun, and a fire-engine, at convenient places; and the houses were so arranged as to make the most of mankind, in lanes and fronting one another, so that every traveller had to run the gauntlet, and every man, woman, and child might get a lick at him. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Henry David Thoreau, Walden — Chapter VIII: The Village (1893)

“ In our most trivial walks, we are constantly, though unconsciously, steering like pilots by certain well-known beacons and headlands, and if we go beyond our usual course we still carry in our minds the bearing of some neighboring cape; and not till we are completely lost, or turned round -- for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost -- do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature. Every man has to learn the points of compass again as often as be awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Henry David Thoreau, Walden — Chapter VIII: The Village (1893)

“ Some have such a vast appetite for the former commodity, that is, the news, and such sound digestive organs, that they can sit forever in public avenues without stirring, and let it simmer and whisper through them like the Etesian winds, or as if inhaling ether, it only producing numbness and insensibility to pain -- otherwise it would often be painful to bear -- without affecting the consciousness. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Henry David Thoreau, Walden — Chapter VIII: The Village (1893)

“ It is a surprising and memorable, as well as valuable experience, to be lost in the woods any time. Often in a snow-storm, even by day, one will come out upon a well-known road and yet find it impossible to tell which way leads to the village. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Henry David Thoreau, Walden — Chapter VIII: The Village (1893)

“ I am convinced, that if all men were to live as simply as I then did, thieving and robbery would be unknown. These take place only in communities where some have got more than is sufficient while others have not enough. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Henry David Thoreau, Walden — Chapter VIII: The Village (1893)

“ You who govern public affairs, what need have you to employ punishments? Love virtue, and the people will be virtuous. The virtues of a superior man are like the wind; the virtues of a common man are like the grass -- I the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Henry David Thoreau, Walden — Chapter VIII: The Village (1893)

“ It is darker in the woods, even in common nights, than most suppose. I frequently had to look up at the opening between the trees above the path in order to learn my route, and, where there was no cart-path, to feel with my feet the faint track which I had worn, or steer by the known relation of particular trees which I felt with my hands, passing between two pines for instance, not more than eighteen inches apart, in the midst of the woods, invariably, in the darkest night. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Henry David Thoreau, Walden — Chapter VIII: The Village (1893)

“ I was even accustomed to make an irruption into some houses, where I was well entertained, and after learning the kernels and very last sieveful of news -- what had subsided, the prospects of war and peace, and whether the world was likely to hold together much longer -- I was let out through the rear avenues, and so escaped to the woods again. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Henry David Thoreau, Walden — Chapter VIII: The Village (1893)

“ Some who live in the outskirts, having come to town a-shopping in their wagons, have been obliged to put up for the night; and gentlemen and ladies making a call have gone half a mile out of their way, feeling the sidewalk only with their feet, and not knowing when they turned. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Henry David Thoreau, Walden — Chapter VIII: The Village (1893)

“ But, wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society. It is true, I might have resisted forcibly with more or less effect, might have run "amok" against society ”

Henry David Thoreau

Summary

Quotes from Walden — Chapter VIII: The Village (Henry David Thoreau)

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