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
“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 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
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
Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written. — 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
Books that are books are all that you want, and there are but a half dozen in any thousand. — 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
The book exists for us, perchance, which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
It is a relief to read some true book, wherein all are equally dead,--equally alive. I think the best parts of Shakespeare… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
There is always room and occasion enough for a true book on any subject; as there is room for more light the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
We are apt to imagine that this hubbub of Philosophy, Literature, and Religion, which is heard in pulpits, lyceums, and parlors, vibrates… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The book exists for us perchance which will explain our miracles and and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we… — 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
I do not know where to find in any literature, whether ancient or modern, any adequate account of that Nature with which… — 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
Since you are my readers, and I have not been much of a traveler, I will not talk about people a thousand… — 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
Of a life of luxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or commerce, or literature, or art. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
A sentence should be read as if its author, had he held a plough instead of a pen, could have drawn a… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
A truly good book is something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild-flower discovered on the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Each reader discovers for himself that, with respect to the simpler features of nature, succeeding poets have done little else than copy… — 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
