Writing Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Time cannot bend the line which God has writ.

— Henry David Thoreau

Write while the heat is in you.

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— 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

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

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— 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

The book has never been written which is to be accepted without any allowance.

— Henry David Thoreau

My life has been the poem I would have writ, But I could not both live and utter it.

— Henry David Thoreau

“My life has been the poem I could have writ But I could not both live and utter it.”

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

Steady labor with the hands, which engrosses the attention also, is unquestionably the best method of removing palaver and sentimentality out of…

— 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

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 modern cheap and fertile press, with all its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of…

— Henry David Thoreau

Today you may write a chapter on the advantages of traveling, and tomorrow you may write another chapter on the advantages of…

— Henry David Thoreau

All men are really most attracted by the beauty of plain speech, and they even write in a florid style in imitation…

— Henry David Thoreau

“Says I to myself” should be the motto of my journal. It is fatal to the writer to be too much possessed…

— Henry David Thoreau

The poet will write for his peers alone. He will remember only that he saw truth and beauty from his position, and…

— Henry David Thoreau

What is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the study. The orator yields to the inspiration…

— Henry David Thoreau

A person who chooses to die or to risk death demonstrates that there are values, principles, maxims, that are more valuable to…

— 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

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

Letter-writing too often degenerates into a communicating of facts, and not of truths; of other men's deeds and not our thoughts.What are…

— 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

“Good writing as well as good acting will be obedience to conscience. There must not be a particle of will or whim…

— Henry David Thoreau

A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the…

— Henry David Thoreau

Methinks some creeds in vestries and churches do forget the hunter wrapped in furs by the Great Slave Lake, and that the…

— Henry David Thoreau

“You shall see rude and sturdy, experienced and wise men, keeping their castles, or teaming up their summer’s wood, or chopping alone…

— 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

“Those who have not learned to read the ancient classics in the language in which they were written must have a very…

— 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 would be worthy of the age to print together the collected Scriptures or Sacred Writings of the several nations, the Chinese,…

— Henry David Thoreau

“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

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

Writing may be either the record of a deed or a deed. It is nobler when it is a deed.

— Henry David Thoreau

The poet is he who can write some pure mythology today without the aid of posterity.

— Henry David Thoreau

Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.

— Henry David Thoreau

As for style of writing, if one has anything to say, it drops from him simply and directly, as a stone falls…

— Henry David Thoreau