Writer Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

In literature it is only the wild that attracts us.

— Henry David Thoreau

Write while the heat is in you.

— Henry David Thoreau

The Library is a wilderness of books.

— Henry David Thoreau

It is not all books that are as dull as their readers.

— Henry David Thoreau

We cannot write well or truly but what we write with gusto.

— Henry David Thoreau

At least let us have healthy books.

— Henry David Thoreau

I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.

— Henry David Thoreau

“To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise...”

— Henry David Thoreau

If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare…

— Henry David Thoreau

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.

— Henry David Thoreau

Surely the writer is to address a world of laborers, and such therefore must be his own discipline.

— Henry David Thoreau

Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.

— Henry David Thoreau

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

— Henry David Thoreau

A journal, is a book that shall contain a record of all your joy, your ecstasy, what you are grateful for.

— Henry David Thoreau

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

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

“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

Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled…

— Henry David Thoreau

“The forcible writer stands bodily behind his words with his experiences. He does not make books out of books, but he has…

— Henry David Thoreau

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

Like speaks to like only; labor to labor, philosophy to philosophy, criticism to criticism, poetry to poetry. Literature speaks how much still…

— Henry David Thoreau

Biography, too, is liable to the same objection; it should be autobiography. Let us not, as the Germans advise, endeavor to go…

— Henry David Thoreau

Literary gentlemen, editors, and critics think that they know how to write, because they have studied grammar and rhetoric; but they are…

— Henry David Thoreau

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

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

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

We can never safely exceed the actual facts in our narratives. Of pure invention, such as some suppose, there is no instance.…

— Henry David Thoreau

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

We are often struck by the force and precision of style to which hard-working men, unpracticed in writing, easily attain when required…

— Henry David Thoreau

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

“It is not all books that are as dull as their readers. There are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which,…

— Henry David Thoreau

“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

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

A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book.

— Henry David Thoreau

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

I cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts in; they are commonly ruled for dollars and cents.

— Henry David Thoreau

We do not learn much from learned books, but from true, sincere, human books, from frank and honest biographies.

— Henry David Thoreau

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them all

— Henry David Thoreau

“Books which are books are all that you want, and there are but half a dozen in any thousand.”

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau