Henry David Thoreau Quotations: Literature, Books & Reading
The penny-post is, commonly, an institution through which you seriously offer a man that penny for his thoughts which is so often safely offered in jest. And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper.—Walden
The woodchopper reads the wisdom of the ages recorded on the paper that holds his dinner, then lights his pipe with it. When we ask for a scrap of paper for the most trivial use, it may have the confessions of Augustine or the sonnets of Shakespeare, and we not observe it. The student kindles his fire, the editor packs his trunk, the sportsman loads his gun, the traveler wraps his dinner, the Irishman papers his shanty, the schoolboy peppers the plastering, the belle pins up her hair, with the printed thoughts of men.—Journal, 10 March 1856
There is a sort of homely truth and naturalness in some books, which is very rare to find, and yet look quite cheap.—Journal, 13 March 1841
There is always room and occasion enough for a true book on any subject; as there is room for more light the brightest day and more rays will not interfere with the first.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
There is many a book which ripples on like a freshet, and flows as glibly as a mill-stream sucking under a causeway; and when their authors are in the full tide of their discourse, Pythagoras and Plato and Jamblichus halt beside them.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
There is no law so strong which a little gladness may not transgress. Pile up your books, the records of sadness, your saws and your laws. Nature is glad outside, and her merry worms within will ere long topple them down.—Journal, 3 January 1853
There is something sublime in the fact that some of the oldest written sentences should thus celebrate the coming in of spring.—Journal, 9 July 1852
To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.—WaldenÂ
We could get no further into the Aeneid than—atque altae moenia Romae,—and the wall of high Rome, before we were constrained to reflect by what myriad tests a work of genius has to be tried; that Virgil, away in Rome, two thousand years off, should have to unfold his meaning, the inspiration of Italian vales, to the pilgrim on New England hills.—"A Walk to Wachusett"
We do not learn much from learned books, but from true, sincere, human books, from frank and honest biographies.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
