"Nations are
possessed
with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the
amount
of hammered stone they leave. What if equal pains were taken to smooth
and polish their manners? One piece of good sense would be more
memorable
than a monument as high as the moon. I love better to see stones in
place. The
grandeur of Thebes
was
a vulgar grandeur. More sensible is a rod of stone wall that bounds an
honest man's field than a hundred-gated Thebes that has wandered
farther
from the true end of life. The religion and civilization which are
barbaric
and heathenish build splendid temples; but what you might call
Christianity
does not. Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only.
It buries itself alive."
in Walden by H. D. Thoreau
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