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 Copy Share Image
A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
The books for young people say a great deal about the selection of Friends; it is because they really have nothing to… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Translate a book a dozen times from one language to another, and what becomes of its style? Most books would be worn… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
There are as many strata at different levels of life as there are leaves in a book. When on the higher levels… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The best books are not read even by those who are called good readers. What does our Concord culture amount to? There… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
If men were to be destroyed and the books they have written were to be transmitted to a new race of creatures,… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Any man will go considerably out of his way to pick up a silver dollar; but here are golden words, which the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best,… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
We are constituted a good deal like chickens, which, taken from the hen, and put in a basket of cotton in the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
A healthy man, with steady employment, as wood-chopping at fifty cents a cord, and a camp in the woods, will not be… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Indeed, the best books have a use, like sticks and stones, which is above or beside their design, not anticipated in the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
You may rely on it that you have the best of me in my books, and that I am not worth seeing… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“A truly good book…teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down and commence living on its hint.… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Our manners have been corrupted by communication with the saints. Our hymn-books resound with a melodious cursing of God and enduring Him… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
It is always singular, but encouraging, to meet with common sense in very old books, as the Heetopades of Veeshnoo Sarma; a… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
How novel and original must be each new mans view of the universe - for though the world is so old -… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
If ever I did a man any goodof course it was something exceptional and insignificant compared with the good or evil which I am… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“Men say they know many things; But lo! they have taken wings, — The arts and sciences, And a thousand appliances; The wind that… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or back gammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“This spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
As for doing good; that is one of the professions which is full. Moreover I have tried it fairly and, strange as it may… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
A traveler who looks at things with an impartial eye may see what the oldest inhabitant has not observed. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post office. You may depend on it, that the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The still youthful energies of the globe have only to be directed in their proper channel. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Concord's little arch does not span all our fate, nor is what transpires under it law for the universe. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The lumberers rarely trouble themselves to put out their fires, such is the dampness of the primitive forest; and this is one cause, no… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“When he has obtained those things which are necessary to life, there is another alternative than to obtain the superfluities; and that is, to… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Wealth is measured by the level of experience in all aspects of life — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
