Henry David Thoreau Quotations: READING, WRITING & WRITERS
As for style of writing—if one has any thing to say, it drops from him simply and directly, as stone falls to the ground.—Thoreau to Daniel Ricketson, 18 August 1857
As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
Blessed are they who never read a newspaper, for they shall see Nature, and through her, God.—Thoreau to Parker Pillsbury, 10 April 1861
Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.—Walden
Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.—Thoreau to Benjamin B. Wiley, 26 April 1857
Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.—Walden
Books, not which affords us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institutions—such call I good books.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
By the quality of a man's writing, by the elevation of its tone, you may measure his self-respect.—Journal, 4 September 1851
English literature, from the days of the minstrels to the Lake Poets,—Chaucer and Spenser and Milton, and even Shakespeare, included- breathes no quite fresh and in this sense wild strain. It is an essentially tame and civilized literature, reflecting Greece and Rome. Her wilderness is a green wood,—her wild man a Robin Hood.—"Walking"
Every poet's muse is circumscribed in her wanderings, and may be well said to haunt some favorite spring or mountain.—Journal, 23 February 1842
