Sublime

Le gouvernement lui-même – simple intermédiaire choisi par les gens pour exécuter leur volonté – est également susceptible d’être abusé et perverti avant que les gens puissent agir par lui. Témoin en ce moment la guerre du Mexique, œuvre d’un groupe relativement restreint d’individus qui se servent du gouvernement permanent comme d’un outil ; car a

John Farmer sat at his door one September evening, after a hard day’s work, his mind still running on his labor more or less. Having bathed, he sat down to re-create his intellectual man. It was a rather cool evening, and some of his neighbors were apprehending a frost. He had not attended to the train of his thoughts long when he heard some one pl

Nul n’est tenu de se placer dans une telle situation vis-à-vis de la société, mais chacun doit se maintenir dans la situation, quelle qu’elle soit, où il se trouve en obéissant aux lois de son être, et ce ne sera jamais en opposition à un gouvernement juste, si par hasard il en trouve un.

We are underbred and low-lived and illiterate; and in this respect I confess I do not make any very broad distinction between the illiterateness of my townsman who cannot read at all and the illiterateness of him who has learned to read only what is for children and feeble intellects.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wan

The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and health of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.

She reads Thoreau over wood fires at night.