Poetry Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.

— Henry David Thoreau

Poetry is the mysticism of mankind.

— Henry David Thoreau

The poet is blithe and cheery ever, and as well as nature.

— Henry David Thoreau

We do not enjoy poetry unless we know it to be poetry.

— Henry David Thoreau

Much of our poetry has the very best manners, but no character.

— Henry David Thoreau

Why should not a poet's cat be winged as well as his horse?

— Henry David Thoreau

Let not the poet shed tears only for the public weal.

— Henry David Thoreau

“The poet writes the history of his own body.”

— Henry David Thoreau

The great poem must have the stamp of greatness as well as its essence.

— Henry David Thoreau

My life has been the poem I would have writ, But I could not both live and utter it.

— Henry David Thoreau

“My life has been the poem I could have writ But I could not both live and utter it.”

— Henry David Thoreau

The culture of the hop ... so analagous to the culture and uses of the grape, may afford a theme for future poets.

— Henry David Thoreau

The poet who walks by moonlight is conscious of a tide in his thought which is to be referred to lunar influence.

— Henry David Thoreau

As long as there is satire, the poet is, as it were, particeps criminis.

— Henry David Thoreau

The works of the great poets have never yet been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them

— Henry David Thoreau

Poetry implies the whole truth. Philosophy expresses a particle of it.

— Henry David Thoreau

What would we not give for some great poem to read now, which would be in harmony with the scenery,--for if men…

— Henry David Thoreau

There is no doubt that the loftiest written wisdom is either rhymed or in some way musically measured,--is, in form as well…

— Henry David Thoreau

But the divinest poem, or the life of a great man, is the severest satire… The greater the genius, the keener the…

— Henry David Thoreau

The murmurs of many a famous river on the other side of the globe reach even to us here, as to more…

— Henry David Thoreau

No definition of poetry is adequate unless it be poetry itself. The most accurate analysis by the rarest wisdom is yet insufficient,…

— Henry David Thoreau

The poet's body even is not fed like other men's, but he sometimes tastes the genuine nectar and ambrosia of the gods,…

— Henry David Thoreau

Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left…

— Henry David Thoreau

“I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, to life itself, than this incessant business.”

— Henry David Thoreau

But there are spirits of a yet more liberal culture, to whom no simplicity is barren. There are not only stately pines,…

— Henry David Thoreau

The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let…

— Henry David Thoreau

It is the characteristic of great poems that they will yield of their sense in due proportion to the hasty and the…

— Henry David Thoreau

It would be well, perhaps, if we were to spend more of our days and nights without any obstruction between us and…

— Henry David Thoreau

Already nature is serving all those uses which science slowly derives on a much higher and grander scale to him that will…

— Henry David Thoreau

Our bread need not ever be sour or hard to digest. What Nature is to the mind she is also to the…

— Henry David Thoreau

The night in prison was novel and interesting enough… I found that even here there was a history and a gossip which…

— Henry David Thoreau

A true poem is distinguished not so much by a felicitous expression, or any thought it suggests, as by the atmosphere which…

— Henry David Thoreau

“This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! I am awaked almost every night by the panting of the…

— Henry David Thoreau

“On Ponkawtasset, since, we took our way, Down this still stream we took our meadowy way, A poet wise has settled, whose…

— Henry David Thoreau

“English literature, from the days of the minstrels to the Lake Poets—Chaucer and Spenser and Milton, and even Shakespeare, included—breathes no quite…

— Henry David Thoreau

“There are other, savager, and more primeval aspects of Nature than our poets have sung. It is only white man's poetry. Homer…

— Henry David Thoreau

What a contrast between the stern and desolate poetry of Ossian, and that of Chaucer, and even of Shakespeare and Milton, much…

— Henry David Thoreau

When I stand in a library where is all the recorded wit of the world, but none of the recording, a mere…

— Henry David Thoreau

“The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by which you earned money…

— Henry David Thoreau

Poetry cannot breathe in the scholar's atmosphere.

— Henry David Thoreau