Henry David Thoreau Quotations: READING, WRITING & WRITERS
We like to read a good description of no thing so well as that which we already know the best, as our friend, or ourselves even.—Journal, 13 October 1860
We should live in all the ages of the world in an hour; ay, in all the worlds of the ages. History, Poetry, Mythology!—I know of no reading of another's experience so startling and informing as this would be.—Walden
What have we to do with petty rumbling news? We have our own great affairs.—Thoreau to Lidian Emerson, 20 June 1843
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
What is a course of history or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer?—Walden
What news! How much more important to know what that is which was never old!—Walden
What poem is this of spring, so often repeated! I am thrilled when I hear it spoken of,—as the spring of such a year, that fytte of the glorious epic.—Journal, 18 February 1857
What would we not give for some great poem to read now, which would be in harmony with the scenery,—for if men read aright, methinks they would never read anything but poems. No history nor philosophy can supply their place.—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
When I read an indifferent book, it seems the best thing I can do, but the inspiring volume hardly leaves me leisure to finish its latter pages. It is slipping out of my fingers while I read. It creates no atmosphere in which it may be perused, but one in which its teachings may be practiced. It confers on me such wealth that I lay it down with regret. What I began by reading I must finish by acting.—Journal, 19 February 1841
