Language Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

The dinner even is only the parable of a dinner, commonly.

— Henry David Thoreau

The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles.

— Henry David Thoreau

It is the man determines what is said, not the words.

— Henry David Thoreau

The language of friendship is not words but meanings. --Henry David Thoreau

— Henry David Thoreau

Where shall we look for standard English, but to the words of a standard man?

— Henry David Thoreau

What can be expressed in words can be expressed in life.

— Henry David Thoreau

The language of friendship is not words, but meanings. It is an intelligence about language.

— Henry David Thoreau

If words were invented to conceal thought, newspapers are a great improvement of a bad invention

— Henry David Thoreau

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

Men must speak English who can write Sanskrit; they must speak a modern language who write, perchance, an ancient and universal one.

— Henry David Thoreau

Give me a sentence which no intelligence can understand. There must be a kind of life and palpitation to it, and under…

— Henry David Thoreau

How shall we account for our pursuits, if they are original? We get the language with which to describe our various lives…

— Henry David Thoreau

Such is the never-failing beauty and accuracy of language, the most perfect art in the world; the chisel of a thousand years…

— Henry David Thoreau

When I read some of the rules for speaking and writing the English language correctly, I think any fool can make a…

— Henry David Thoreau

In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.

— Henry David Thoreau

We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the filed, but not to describe human character.

— Henry David Thoreau

A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any…

— Henry David Thoreau

In an ancient and dead language, any recognition of living nature attracts us. These are such sentences as were written while grass…

— Henry David Thoreau

All the moral laws are readily translated into natural philosophy, for often we have only to restore the primitive meaning of thewords…

— Henry David Thoreau

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

No man's thoughts are new, but the style of their expression is the never-failing novelty which cheers and refreshes men. If we…

— Henry David Thoreau

There are other letters for the child to learn than those which Cadmus invented. The Spaniards have a good term to express…

— Henry David Thoreau

Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but…

— Henry David Thoreau

It would seem as if the very language of our parlors would lose all its nerve and degenerate into palaver wholly, our…

— Henry David Thoreau

The word which is best said came nearest to not being spoken at all, for it is cousin to a deed which…

— Henry David Thoreau

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

If a man is rich and strong anywhere, it must be on his native soil. Here I have been these forty years…

— Henry David Thoreau

A written word is the choicestof relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other…

— Henry David Thoreau

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

— Henry David Thoreau

In a world of peace and love, music would be the universal language.

— Henry David Thoreau

We seem but to linger in manhood to tell the dreams of our childhood, and they vanish out of memory ere we…

— Henry David Thoreau

However much we admire the orator's occasional bursts of eloquence, the noblest written words are commonly as far behind or abovethe fleeting…

— Henry David Thoreau

“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

It is worth the expense of youthful days and costly hours, if you learn only some words of an ancient language, which…

— Henry David Thoreau

There is all the poetry in the world in a name. It is a poem which the mass of men hear and…

— Henry David Thoreau