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Henry David Thoreau Quotes about Reading

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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.

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.

Henry David Thoreau
Wise, Book, Reading
Henry David Thoreau, Jeffrey S. Cramer (2007). “I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau”, p.24, Yale University Press

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

Henry David Thoreau
Reading, Book, Beer
1849 A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers,'Sunday'.

A book should contain pure discoveries, glimpses of terra firma, though by shipwrecked mariners, and not the art of navigation by those who have never been out of sight of land.

Henry David Thoreau
Art, Book, Reading
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.68, Xist Publishing

Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.

Henry David Thoreau
Book, Reading, Learning
Henry David Thoreau (2004). “On Reading: From "Walden"”, p.6, Princeton University Press

What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.

Henry David Thoreau
Reading, Acting, Hints
Henry David Thoreau, Jeffrey S. Cramer (2007). “I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau”, p.24, Yale University Press

The Library is a wilderness of books.

Henry David Thoreau
Book, Reading, Library
Henry David Thoreau (1960). “H. D. Thoreau, a Writer's Journal”, p.84, Courier Corporation

Why should we leave it to Harper & Brothers and Redding & Co. to select our reading?

Henry David Thoreau
Brother, Book, Reading
Henry David Thoreau (2004). “Walden: 150th Anniversary Illustrated Edition of the American Classic”, p.106, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.

Henry David Thoreau
Wise, Reading, Book
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.69, Graphic Arts Books

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

Henry David Thoreau
Life, Book, Reading
1854 Walden, or Life in the Woods,'Reading'.

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

Henry David Thoreau
Book, Reading, Half
Henry David Thoreau (1960). “H. D. Thoreau, a Writer's Journal”, p.84, Courier Corporation

Whatever sentence will bear to be read twice, we may be sure was thought twice.

Henry David Thoreau
Reading, May, Bears
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.133, Penguin

Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.

Henry David Thoreau
Book, Reading, Literature
Henry David Thoreau (1894). “Familiar Letters of Henry David Thoreau”

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.

Henry David Thoreau
Philosophy, Reading, Men
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.64, Xist Publishing

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.

Henry David Thoreau
Travel, Book, Reading
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.232, Delphi Classics

I never read a novel, they have so little real life and thought in them.

Henry David Thoreau
Real, Reading, Littles
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.95, Penguin

Do not read the newspapers.

Henry David Thoreau
Reading, Journalism, Newspapers
Henry David Thoreau, David Gross (2007). “The Price of Freedom: Political Philosophy from Thoreau's Journals”, p.46, David M Gross

It is remarkable, but on the whole, perhaps, not to be lamented, that the world is so unkind to a new book. Any distinguished traveler who comes to our shores is likely to get more dinners and speeches of welcome than he can well dispose of, but the best books, if noticed at all, meet with coldness and suspicion, or, what is worse, gratuitous, off-hand criticism.

Henry David Thoreau
Book, Reading, Hands
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Selected Essays of Henry David Thoreau”, p.77, Simon and Schuster

After all, I believe it is the style of thought entirely, and the style of expression, which makes the difference in books.

Henry David Thoreau
Believe, Book, Reading
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.2129, Delphi Classics

He who cannot read is worse than deaf and blind, is yet but half alive, is still-born.

Henry David Thoreau
Book, Reading, Deaf And Blind
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.2552, Delphi Classics

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?

Henry David Thoreau
Book, Reading, Men
Henry David Thoreau (1991). “A Yearning Toward Wildness: Environmental Quotations from the Writings of Henry David Thoreau”, Peachtree Pub Limited

The woodchopper reads the wisdom of the ages recorded on the paper that holds his dinner, then lights his pipe with it. When we ask for a scrap of paper for the most trivial use, it may have the confessions of Augustine or the sonnets of Shakespeare, and we not observe it. The student kindles his fire, the editor packs his trunk, the sportsman loads his gun, the traveler wraps his dinner, the Irishman papers his shanty, the schoolboy peppers the plastering, the belle pins up her hair, with the printed thoughts of men.

Henry David Thoreau
Reading, Book, Gun

The book exists for us perchance which will explain our miracles and and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. These same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to all the wise men; not one has been omitted; and each has answered them, according to his ability, by his words and his life.

Henry David Thoreau
Wise, Book, Reading
Henry David Thoreau (2004). “Walden: Introduction and Annotations by Bill McKibben”, p.102, Beacon Press

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.

Henry David Thoreau
Book, Reading, Light
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.2068, Delphi Classics

We should read history as little critically as we consider the landscape, and be more interested by the atmospheric tints and various lights and shades which the intervening spaces create than by its groundwork and composition.

Henry David Thoreau
Reading, Light, Space
Henry David Thoreau (2017). “HENRY DAVID THOREAU – The Man, The Philosopher & The Trailblazer (Illustrated): Biographies, Memoirs, Autobiographical Books & Personal Letters (Including Walden, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, The Maine Woods, Cape Cod, A Yankee in Canada…)”, p.133, e-artnow

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.

Henry David Thoreau
Children, Reading, Naps
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.67, Xist Publishing

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