When they go fishing, it is not really fish they are after. It is a philosophic meditation. ~E.T. Browncommonly misattributed to Henry David Thoreau as Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after. =or= Many men fish all their lives without ever realizing that it is not the fish they are after. Misquotation. By Michael Baughman in his A River Seen Right (Lyons Press, 1995) p. 156, in which he wrote, clearly paraphrasing and not quoting: “I think it was in Walden where he wrote that a lot of men fish all their lives without ever realizing that fish isn’t really what they?re after.” Baughman may have been paraphrasing from Thoreau’s Journal, January 26, 1853: “It is remarkable that many men will go with eagerness to Walden Pond in the winter to fish for pickerel and yet not seem to care for the landscape. Of course it cannot be merely for the pickerel they may catch; there is some adventure in it; but any love of nature which they may feel is certainly very slight and indefinite. They call it going a-fishing, and so indeed it is, though perchance, their natures know better. Now I go a-fishing and a-hunting every day, but omit the fish and the game, which are the least important part. I have learned to do without them. They were indispensable only as long as I was a boy. I am encouraged when I see a dozen villagers drawn to Walden Pond to spend a day in fishing through the ice, and suspect that I have more fellows than I knew, but I am disappointed and surprised to find that they lay so much stress on the fish which they catch or fail to catch, and on nothing else, as if there were nothing else to be caught.” walden.org/Library/Quotations/The_Henry_D._Thoreau_Mis-Quotation_Page (Thanks, Walden Woods Project, walden.org)
Home >> Quote SMS >> Philosophical Quotes SMS >> When they go fishing it is not