Henry David Thoreau Quotations: Thinking & Thoughts
We made many a “bran new” theory of life over a thin dish of gruel, which combined the advantages of conviviality with the clear-headedness which philosophy requires.—Walden
We managed to keep our thoughts dry, however, and only our clothes were wet.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
We never exchange more than three words with a Friend in our lives on that level to which our thoughts and feelings almost habitually rise.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
We rowed leisurely up the stream for several hours, until the sun had got high in the sky, our thoughts monotonously beating time to our oars. For outward variety there was only the river and the receding shores, a vista continually opening behind and closing before us, as we sat with our backs up-stream; and, for inward, such thoughts as the muses grudgingly lent us.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
We seem to hear the music of a thought, and care not if the understanding be not gratified.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
What a fine communication from age to age, of the fairest and noblest thoughts, the aspirations of ancient men, even such as were never communicated by speech, is music! It is the flower of language, thought colored and curved, fluent and flexible, its crystal fountain tinged with the sun’s rays, and its purling ripples reflecting the grass and the clouds.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
What I have learned is mine; I’ve had my thought,
And me the Muses noble truths have taught.— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
Whatever book or sentence will bear to be read twice, we may be sure was thought twice.—Journal, 18 March 1842
While he was thinking one thing in his brain, I was endeavoring to divine his thought in mine.—Walden
While we float here, far from that tributary stream on whose banks our Friends and kindred dwell, our thoughts, like the stars, come out of their horizon still; for there circulates a finer blood than Lavoisier has discovered the laws of,—the blood, not of kindred merely, but of kindness, whose pulse still beats at any distance and forever.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
