Henry David Thoreau Quotations: Home & Travel
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
When I consider how our houses are built and paid for, or not paid for, and their internal economy managed and sustained, I wonder that the floor does not give way under the visitor while he is admiring the gewgaws upon the mantelpiece, and let him through into the cellar, to some solid and honest though earthy foundation.—Walden
When I was four years old, as well I remember, I was brought from Boston to this my native town, through these very woods and this field, to the pond. It is one of the oldest scenes stamped in my memory. And now to-night my flute has waked the echoes over that very water.—Walden
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
When you are starting away, leaving your more 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
