Book Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

The Library is a wilderness of books.

— Henry David Thoreau

At least let us have healthy books.

— Henry David Thoreau

It is not all books that are as dull as their readers.

— Henry David Thoreau

We do not learn much from learned books, but from true, sincere, human books, from frank and honest biographies.

— Henry David Thoreau

Why should we leave it to Harper & Brothers and Redding & Co. to select our reading?

— Henry David Thoreau

I cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts in; they are commonly ruled for dollars and cents.

— Henry David Thoreau

Our hymn-books resound with a melodious cursing of God and enduring Him forever.

— Henry David Thoreau

The book has never been written which is to be accepted without any allowance.

— Henry David Thoreau

Homeliness is almost as great a merit in a book as in a house, if the reader would abide there. It is…

— Henry David Thoreau

In most books, the I, of first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is…

— Henry David Thoreau

A journal, is a book that shall contain a record of all your joy, your ecstasy, what you are grateful for.

— Henry David Thoreau

A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in…

— Henry David Thoreau

A book should contain pure discoveries, glimpses of terra firma, though by shipwrecked mariners, and not the art of navigation by those…

— Henry David Thoreau

Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man…

— Henry David Thoreau

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its…

— Henry David Thoreau

Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man…

— Henry David Thoreau

What a singular fact for an angel visitant to this earth to carry back in his note-book, that men were forbidden to…

— Henry David Thoreau

In an ancient and dead language, any recognition of living nature attracts us. These are such sentences as were written while grass…

— Henry David Thoreau

It is one of the signs of the times. We confess that we have risen from reading this book with enlarged ideas,…

— Henry David Thoreau

It is remarkable, but on the whole, perhaps, not to be lamented, that the world is so unkind to a new book.…

— Henry David Thoreau

The better part of the man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they…

— Henry David Thoreau

Every sacred book, successively, has been accepted in the faith that it was to be the final resting-place of the sojourning soul;but…

— Henry David Thoreau

Books of natural history make the most cheerful winter reading. I read in Audubon with a thrill of delight, when the snow…

— Henry David Thoreau

How novel and original must be each new mans view of the universe - for though the world is so old -…

— Henry David Thoreau

There is a sort of homely truth and naturalness in some books which is very rare to find, and yet looks cheap…

— Henry David Thoreau

The woodchopper reads the wisdom of the ages recorded on the paper that holds his dinner, then lights his pipe with it.…

— Henry David Thoreau

Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God's property, by some clerk. They do not in…

— Henry David Thoreau

The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied…

— Henry David Thoreau

“It is not all books that are as dull as their readers. There are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which,…

— Henry David Thoreau

A truly good book attracts very little favor to itself. It is so true that it teaches me better than to read…

— Henry David Thoreau

Books are for the most part willfully and hastily written, as parts of a system to supply a want real or imagined.

— Henry David Thoreau

A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book.

— Henry David Thoreau

A good book is the plectrum with which our else silent lyres are struck.

— Henry David Thoreau

He who cannot read is worse than deaf and blind, is yet but half alive, is still-born.

— Henry David Thoreau

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.

— Henry David Thoreau

After all, I believe it is the style of thought entirely, and the style of expression, which makes the difference in books.

— Henry David Thoreau

Many college text-books, which were a weariness and stumbling-block when I studied, I have since read a little with pleasure and profit.

— Henry David Thoreau

The book exists for us, perchance, which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones.

— Henry David Thoreau

A truly good book is something as wildly natural and primitive, mysterious and marvelous, ambrosial and fertile as a fungus or a…

— Henry David Thoreau

Books that are books are all that you want, and there are but a half dozen in any thousand.

— Henry David Thoreau