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    Thoreau's Book of Quotations
    Thoreau's Book of Quotations
    Thoreau's Book of Quotations
    Ebook142 pages1 hour

    Thoreau's Book of Quotations

    By Henry David Thoreau

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    About this ebook

    To Emerson and other New England transcendentalists who knew him best, Thoreau often seemed prickly and antisocial. But in his writings he was (and is) a man anyone would treasure as a friend, sounding board, and spiritual advisor — a man who trafficked in that rarest of commodities, the truth. Even now, almost 140 years after his death, his voice remains clear and compelling, and his truths are as relevant and meaningful as they were in his lifetime.
    In this treasury of more than 450 striking, thought-provoking excerpts from his writing, you will hear him railing against injustice, giving voice to his love of nature, and advocating the simplicity and conscious living that he brought to fruition during his two-year stay at Walden Pond. "To be serene and successful we must be at one with the universe." "Our life is frittered away by detail…. Simplify, simplify."
    Grouped under 17 headings, including "Education," "Freedom and Individualism," "Friendship and Love," "Human Nature," "Literature and Writing," "Nature," "Season," and "Solitude," the quotations include such favorites as "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation" and "Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk." Whatever category they are in, Thoreau's observations provide so much inspiration and intellectual nourishment that browsing through this book becomes an exciting voyage of discovery into the heart of the human condition.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDover Publications
    Release dateMay 24, 2012
    ISBN9780486159317
    Thoreau's Book of Quotations
    Author

    Henry David Thoreau

    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) was an American author and naturalist. A leading figure of Transcendentalism, he is best remembered for Walden, an account of the two years he spent living in a cabin on the north shore of Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts, and for Civil Disobedience, an essay that greatly influenced the abolitionist movement and the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

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      Book preview

      Thoreau's Book of Quotations - Henry David Thoreau

      CONTEMPLATION AND REFLECTION

      He is the rich man, and enjoys the fruits of riches, who summer and winter forever can find delight in his own thoughts.

      A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

      e9780486159317_i0003.jpg

      In all perception of the truth there is a divine ecstasy, an inexpressible delirium of joy, as when a youth embraces his betrothed virgin.

      Familiar Letters

      e9780486159317_i0004.jpg

      New ideas come into this world somewhat like falling meteors, with a flash and an explosion, and perhaps somebody’s castle-roof perforated.

      Familiar Letters

      e9780486159317_i0005.jpg

      Genius is a light which makes darkness visible, like the lightning’s flash, which perchance shatters the temple of knowledge itself,—and not a taper lighted at the hearth-stone of the race, which pales before the light of common day.

      Walking

      e9780486159317_i0006.jpg

      Truth strikes us from behind, and in the dark, as well as from before and in broad daylight.

      Journal

      e9780486159317_i0007.jpg

      Ever and anon something will occur which my philosophy has not dreamed of. The limits of the actual are set some thoughts further off. That which had seemed a rigid wall of vast thickness unexpectedly proves a thin and undulating drapery.

      Journal

      e9780486159317_i0008.jpg

      Objects are concealed from our view, not so much because they are out of the course of our visual ray as because we do not bring our minds and eyes to bear on them, for there is no power to see in the eye itself, any more than in any other jelly.

      Autumnal Tints

      What shall we make of the fact that you have only to stand on your head a moment to be enchanted with the beauty of the landscape?

      Journal

      e9780486159317_i0009.jpg

      It is only necessary to behold thus the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair’s breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance.

      Journal

      e9780486159317_i0010.jpg

      I am, perchance, most and most profitably interested in the things which I already know a little about; a mere and utter novelty is a mere monstrosity to me.

      Journal

      e9780486159317_i0011.jpg

      We cannot see anything until we are possessed with the idea of it, take it into our heads,—and then we can hardly see anything else.

      Autumnal Tints

      e9780486159317_i0012.jpg

      Whether he sleeps or wakes,—whether he runs or walks,—whether he uses a microscope or a telescope, or his naked eye,—a man never discovers anything, never overtakes anything, or leaves anything behind, but himself.

      Familiar Letters

      e9780486159317_i0013.jpg

      This world is but canvass to our imaginations.

      A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

      e9780486159317_i0014.jpg

      The landscape lies far and fair within, and the deepest thinker is the farthest traveled.

      A Walk to Wachusett

      e9780486159317_i0015.jpg

      As Bonaparte sent out his horsemen in the Red Sea on all sides to find shallow water, so I sent forth my mounted thoughts to find deep water.

      Familiar Letters

      e9780486159317_i0016.jpg

      Any sincere thought is irresistible.

      A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

      e9780486159317_i0017.jpg

      If I am visited by a thought, I chew that cud each successive morning, as long as there is any flavor in it.

      Journal

      Our genius is like a brush which only once in many months is freshly dipped into the paint-pot. It becomes so dry that though we apply it incessantly, it fails to tinge the earth and sky. Applied to the same spot incessantly, it at length imparts no color to it.

      Journal

      e9780486159317_i0018.jpg

      It is a far more difficult feat to get up without spilling your morning thought, than that which is often practiced of taking a cup of water from behind your head as you lie on your back and drinking from it.

      Journal

      e9780486159317_i0019.jpg

      When my thoughts are sensible of change, I love to see and sit on rocks which I have known, and pry into their moss, and see unchangeableness so

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