Henry David Thoreau Quotes About Reading
-
Certainly, we do not need to be soothed and entertained always like children. He who resorts to the easy novel, because he is languid, does no better than if he took a nap.
→ -
What would we not give for some great poem to read now, which would be in harmony with the scenery,--for if men read aright, methinks they would never read anything but poems. No history nor philosophy can supply their place.
→ -
Books of natural history make the most cheerful winter reading. I read in Audubon with a thrill of delight, when the snow covers the ground, of the magnolia, and the Florida keys, and their warm sea breezes; of the fence-rail, and the cotton-tree, and the migrations of the rice-bird; of the breaking up of winter in Labrador, and the melting of the snow on the forks of the Missouri; and owe an accession of health to these reminiscences of luxuriant nature.
→ -
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.
→ -
I have not read far in the statutes of this Commonwealth. It is not profitable reading. They do not always say what is true; and they do not always mean what they say.
→ -
Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institution - such call I good books.
→ -
A truly good book is something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild-flower discovered on the prairies of the West or in the jungles of the East.
→ -
In Homer and Chaucer there is more of the innocence and serenity of youth than in the more modern and moral poets. The Iliad is not Sabbath but morning reading, and men cling to this old song, because they still have moments of unbaptized and uncommitted life, which give them an appetite for more.
→ -
Some hard and dry book in a dead language, which you have found it impossible to read at home, but for which you still have a lingering regard, is the best to carry with you on a journey.
→ -
He who cannot read is worse than deaf and blind, is yet but half alive, is still-born.
→ -
Even the poor student studies and is taught only political economy, while that economy of living which is synonymous with philosophy is not even sincerely professed in our colleges. The consequence is, that while he is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father in debt irretrievably.
→ -
Whatever sentence will bear to be read twice, we may be sure was thought twice.
→ -
It is one of the signs of the times. We confess that we have risen from reading this book with enlarged ideas, and grander conceptions of our duties in this world. It did expand us a little.
→ -
In those days, when my hands were much employed, I read but little, but the least scraps of paper which lay on the ground, my holder, or tablecloth, afforded me as much entertainment, in fact answered the same purpose as the Iliad.
→ -
It would be worth the while to select our reading, for books are the society we keep; to read only the serenely true; never statistics, nor fiction, nor news, nor reports, nor periodicals, but only great poems, and when they failed, read them again, or perchance write more. Instead of other sacrifice, we might offer up our perfect (teleia) thoughts to the gods daily, in hymns or psalms. For we should be at the helm at least once a day.
→ -
Why should we leave it to Harper & Brothers and Redding & Co. to select our reading?
→ -
Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.
→ -
If men were to be destroyed and the books they have written were to be transmitted to a new race of creatures, in a new world, what kind of record would be found in them of so remarkable a phenomenon as the rainbow?
→ -
A truly good book attracts very little favor to itself. It is so true that it teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down and commence living on its hint. When I read an indifferent book, it seems the best thing I can do, but the inspiring volume hardly leaves me leisure to finish its latter pages. It is slipping out of my fingers while I read. It creates no atmosphere in which it may be perused, but one in which its teachings may be practiced. It confers on me such wealth that I lay it down with regret. What I began by reading I must finish by acting.
→ -
Since you are my readers, and I have not been much of a traveler, I will not talk about people a thousand miles off, but come as near home as I can. As the time is short, I will leave out all the flattery, and retain all the criticism.
→ -
It is not all books that are as dull as their readers.
→ -
Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.
→ -
Books that are books are all that you want, and there are but a half dozen in any thousand.
→ -
After reading Howitt's account of the Australian gold-diggings one evening,... I asked myself why I might not be washing some golddaily, though it were only the finest particles,--why I might not sink a shaft down to the gold within me, and work that mine.... At any rate, I might pursue some path, however solitary and narrow and crooked, in which I could walk with love and reverence.
→ -
There is always room and occasion enough for a true book on any subject; as there is room for more light the brightest day and more rays will not interfere with the first.
→ -
The Library is a wilderness of books.
→ -
I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself.
→ -
The whole of the day should not be daytime; there should be one hour, if not more, which the day did not bring forth.
→ -
A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.
→ -
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
→
Related Authors
-
Mahatma Gandhi Civil rights leader -
Mark Twain Author -
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essayist -
John Muir Author -
Friedrich Nietzsche Philologist -
Louisa May Alcott Novelist -
Edgar Allan Poe Author -
Herman Melville Novelist -
Martin Luther King, Jr. Civil rights activist -
Christopher McCandless Adventurer -
Margaret Fuller Journalist -
Arthur Schopenhauer Philosopher -
Jean-Jacques Rousseau Philosopher -
Harriet Beecher Stowe Author -
Aldo Leopold Author -
Jack London Author -
Walt Whitman Poet -
Abraham Lincoln 16th U.S. President -
Leo Tolstoy Writer -
Nathaniel Hawthorne Novelist