History Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

The researcher is more memorable than the researched.

— Henry David Thoreau

A man will not need to study history to find out what is best for his own culture.

— Henry David Thoreau

Some creatures are made to see in the dark.

— Henry David Thoreau

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent.

— Henry David Thoreau

Going from--toward; it is the history of every one of us.

— Henry David Thoreau

There is no history of how bad became better.

— Henry David Thoreau

The highest condition of art is artlessness.

— Henry David Thoreau

Exaggerated history is poetry, and truth referred to a new standard.

— Henry David Thoreau

I found that they knew but little of the history of their race, and could be entertained by stories about their ancestors…

— Henry David Thoreau

We perceive that the schemers return again and again to common sense and labor. Such is the evidence of history.

— Henry David Thoreau

There are secret articles in our treaties with the gods, of more importance than all the rest, which the historian can never…

— Henry David Thoreau

It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.

— Henry David Thoreau

Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history…

— Henry David Thoreau

Indeed, the Englishman's history of New England commences only when it ceases to be New France.

— Henry David Thoreau

There are two classes of authors: the one write the history of their times, the other their biography.

— Henry David Thoreau

Such were garrulous and noisy eras, which no longer yield any sound, but the Grecian or silent and melodious era is ever…

— Henry David Thoreau

There has always been the same amount of light in the world. The new and missing stars, the comets and eclipses, do…

— Henry David Thoreau

Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. It is astonishing how few…

— Henry David Thoreau

Men seem anxious to accomplish an orderly retreat through the centuries, earnestly rebuilding the works behind them, as they are battered down…

— Henry David Thoreau

No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, or philosophy,…

— Henry David Thoreau

“We go eastward to realize history, and study the works of art and literature, retracing the steps of the race; we go…

— Henry David Thoreau

Most events recorded in history are more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, by which all are attracted,but…

— Henry David Thoreau

“As yesterday and the historical ages are past, as the work of today is present, so some flitting perspectives and demi-experiences of…

— Henry David Thoreau

There is always some accident in the best things, whether thoughts or expressions or deeds. The memorable thought, the happy expression, the…

— Henry David Thoreau

Critical acumen is exerted in vain to uncover the past; the past cannot be presented; we cannot know what we are not.…

— Henry David Thoreau

The natural historian is not a fisherman who prays for cloudy days and good luck merely; but as fishing has been styled…

— 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

No doubt Carlyle has a propensity to exaggerate the heroic in history, that is, he creates you an ideal hero rather than…

— 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

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

But it is fit that the Past should be dark; though the darkness is not so much a quality of the past…

— Henry David Thoreau

No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America. They are rare in the history of the world. There are…

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

“Those who have been bred in the school of politics fail now and always to face the facts.”

— Henry David Thoreau

All the events which make the annals of the nations are but the shadows of our private experiences.

— Henry David Thoreau

“There is a period in the history of the individual, as of the race, when the hunters are the "best men," as…

— Henry David Thoreau

The Xanthus or Scamander is not a mere dry channel and bed of a mountain torrent, but fed by the ever-flowing springs…

— Henry David Thoreau

“The whole course of human history may depend on a change of heart in a single, solitary, even humble individual. For it…

— Henry David Thoreau

“A traveller! I love his title. A traveler is to be reverenced as such. His profession is the best symbol of our…

— Henry David Thoreau

Nations! What are nations? Tartars! and Huns! and Chinamen! Like insects they swarm. The historian strives in vain to make them memorable.…

— Henry David Thoreau