Henry David Thoreau Quotations: Literature, Books & Reading
It is not all books that are as dull as their readers.—Walden
It is remarkable, but on the whole, perhaps, not to be lamented, that the world is so unkind to a new book. Any distinguished traveler who comes to our shores is likely to get more dinners and speeches of welcome than he can well dispose of, but the best books, if noticed at all, meet with coldness and suspicion, or, what is worse, gratuitous, off-hand criticism.—"Thomas Carlyle and His Works"
Many college text-books which were a weariness and a stumbling-block when studied, I have since read a little in with pleasure and profit.—Journal, 19 February 1854
No wonder that Alexander carried the Iliad with him on his expeditions in a precious casket.—Walden
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
So far as the natural history is concerned, you often have your choice between uninteresting truth and interesting falsehood.—Journal, 5 March 1860
Some of these sublime sentences, as the Chaldaean oracles of Zoroaster, still surviving after a thousand revolutions and translations, alone make us doubt if the poetic form and dress are not transitory, and not essential to the most effective and enduring expression of thought.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
The book exists for us perchance which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. These same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to all the wise men; not one has been omitted; and each has answered them, according to his ability, by his words and his life.—Walden
The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of what wisdom and valor and generosity we have.—Walden
The Library is a wilderness of books.—Journal, 16 March 1852
