Whatever sentence will bear to be read twice, we may be sure was thought twice. — 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
It is not in vain that man speaks to man. This is the value of literature. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“Books which are books are all that you want, and there are but half a dozen in any thousand.” — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I never read a novel, they have so little real life and thought in them. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
There are two classes of authors: the one write the history of their times, the other their biography. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
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
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 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
Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, seewhat isbefore you, and walkon intofuturity. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 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
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
The newspapers, I perceive, devote some of their columns specially to politics or government without charge; and this, one would say, is… — 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
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
“Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions… — 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
Two thousand summers have imparted to the monuments of Grecian literature, as to her marbles, only a maturer golden and autumnal tint,… — 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
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for… — 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
The New Testament is an invaluable book, though I confess to having been slightly prejudiced against it in my very early days… — 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
We go eastward to realize history and study the works of art and literature, retracingthe steps of the race; we go westward… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
It would be worth the while to select our reading, for books are the society we keep; to read only the serenely… — 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
And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Some hard and dry book in a dead language, which you have found it impossible to read at home, but for which… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, see what is before you, and walk on… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad-Gita, in comparison with which our modern… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Everything that is printed and bound in a book contains some echo at least of the best that is in literature. — 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
