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The Thoreau Institute
at Walden Woods Library
Thoreau's
Life & Writings
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Henry D. Thoreau Quotation Pages
On Home and Travel
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Only that traveling is good which
reveals to me the value of home and enables me to enjoy it better. [Journal,
11 March 1856]
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Today you may write a chapter on
the advantages of traveling, and tomorrow you may write another
chapter on the advantages of not traveling. [Journal, 11
November 1851]
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How many things can you go away
from? They see the comet from the northwest coast just as plainly as
we do, and the same stars through its tail. Take the shortest way
round and stay at home. A man dwells in his native valley like a
corolla in its calyx, like an acorn in its cup. Here, of
course, is all that you love, all that you expect, all that you are.
Here is your bride elect, as close to you as she can be got. Here is
all the best and all the worst you can imagine. What more do you
want? Bear hereaway then! Foolish people imagine that what they
imagine is somewhere else. That stun is not made in any factory but
your own. [Journal, 1 November 1858]
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He who rides and keeps the beaten
track studies the fences chiefly. [The Maine Woods,
"Chesuncook"]
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How often it happens that the
traveler's principal distinction is that he is one who knows less
about the country than a native! [Journal, 6 August 1851]
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A traveler who looks at things with
an impartial eye may see what the oldest inhabitant has not
observed. [Journal, 20 August 1851]
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Give me the old familiar walk,
postoffice and all, with this ever new self, with this infinite
expectation and faith, which does not know when it is beaten. We'll
go nutting once more. We'll pluck the nut of the world, and crack it
in the winter evenings. Theaters and all other sightseeing are
puppet-shows in comparison. I will take another walk to the Cliff,
another row on the river, another skate on the meadow, be out in the
first snow, and associate with the winter birds. Here I am at home.
In the bare and bleached crust of the earth I recognize my friend. [Journal,
1 November 1858]
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The discoveries which we make abroad are
special and particular;
those which we make at home are general and significant. The further
off, the nearer the surface. The nearer home, the deeper. [Journal,
7 September 1851]
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Some do not walk at all; others walk
in the highways; a few walk across lots. Roads are made for horses
and men of business. I do not travel in them much, comparatively,
because I am not in a hurry to get to any tavern or grocery or
livery-stable or depot to which they lead. ["Walking"]
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This is a common experience in my
traveling. I plod along, thinking what a miserable world this is and
what miserable fellows we that inhabit it, wondering what it is
tempts men to live in it; but anon I leave the towns behind and am
lost in some boundless heath, and life becomes gradually more
tolerable, if not even glorious. [Journal, 17 June
1857]
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It is far more independent to travel
on foot. You have to sacrifice so much to the horse. You cannot
choose the most agreeable places in which to spend the noon.,
commanding the finest views, because commonly there is no water
there, or you cannot get there with your horse. [Journal, 4
July 1858]
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You say that you have traveled far
and wide. How many men have you seen that did not belong to any
sect, or party, or clique? Did you go further than letters of
introduction would avail? [Journal, 9 August 1858]
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I have several friends and
acquaintances who are very good companions in the house or for an
afternoon walk, but whom I cannot make up my mind to make a longer
excursion with; for I discover, all at once, that they are too
gentlemanly in manners, dress, and all their habits. It is a great
disadvantage for a traveler to be a gentleman of this kind; he is so
ill-treated, only a prey to landlords. It would be too much of a
circumstance to enter a strange town or house with such a companion.
You could not travel incognito; you might get into the papers. You
should travel as a common man. If such a one were to set out to make
a walking-journey, he would betray himself at every step. Every one
would see that he was trying an experiment, as plainly as they could
see that a lame man is lame by his limping. The natives would bow to
him, other gentlemen would invite him to ride, conductors would warn
him that this was the second-class car, and many would take him for
a clergyman; and so he would be continually pestered and balked and
run upon. You would not see the natives at all. Instead of going in
quietly at the back door and sitting by the kitchen fire, you would
be shown into a cold parlor, there to confront a fireboard, and
excite a commotion in the whole family. No, you must be a common
man, or at least travel as one, and then nobody will know that you
are there or have been there. [Journal, 3 June 1857]
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It takes a man of genius to travel
in his own country, in his native village; to make any progress
between his door and his gate. [Journal, 6 August 1851]
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When you are starting away, leaving
your mare familiar fields, for a little adventure like a walk, you
look at every object with a traveler's, or at least with historical,
eyes; you pause on the first bridge, where an ordinary walk hardly
commences, and begin to observe and moralize like a traveler. It is
worth the while to see your native village thus sometimes, as if you
were a traveler passing through it, commenting on your neighbors as
strangers. [Journal, 4 September 1851]
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A man must generally get away some
hundreds or thousands of miles from home before he can be said to
begin his travels. Why not begin his travels at home? Would he have
to go far or look very closely to discover novelties? The traveler
who, in this sense, pursues his travels at home, has the advantage
at any rate of a long residence in the country to make his
observations correct and profitable. Now the American goes to
England, while the Englishman comes to America, in order to describe
the country. [Journal, 6 August 1851]
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There would be this advantage in
traveling in your own country, even in your own neighborhood, that you
would be so thoroughly prepared to understand what you saw you would
make fewer traveler's mistakes. [Journal, 12 June 1851]
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If a man is rich and strong anywhere, it
must be on his native soil. Here I have been these forty years learning
the language of these fields that I may the better express myself. If I
should travel to the prairies, I should much less understand them, and
my past life would serve me but ill to describe them. Many a weed here
stands for more of life to me than the big trees of California would if
I should go there. We need only travel enough to give our intellects an
airing. [Journal, 20 November 1857]
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When it was proposed to me to go abroad,
rub oft some rust, and better my condition in a worldly sense, I
fear lest my life will lose some of its homeliness. If these fields and
streams and woods, the phenomena of nature here, and the simple
occupations of the inhabitants should cease to interest and inspire me,
no culture or wealth would atone for the loss. [Journal, 11 March
1856]
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I cannot but regard it as a kindness in
those who have the steering of me that, by the want of pecuniary wealth,
I have been nailed dawn to this my native region so long and steadily,
and made to study and love this spot of earth more and more. What would
signify in comparison a thin and diffused love and knowledge of the
whole earth instead, got by wandering? The traveler's is but a barren
and comfortless condition. Wealth will not buy a man a home in
nature-house nor farm there. The man of business does rot by his
business earn a residence in nature, but is denaturalized rather. [Journal,
12 November 1853]
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I want nothing new, if I can have but a
tithe of the old secured to me. I will spurn all wealth beside. Think of
the consummate folly of attempting to go away from here! When the
constant endeavor should be to get nearer and nearer here! [Journal,
1 November 1858]
A
Note on the Text:
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Source:
Unless otherwise noted, quotations are from The Writings of Henry
David Thoreau (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906)
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