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Henry David Thoreau Quotes about Travel - Page 2

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I am very little of a traveler.

I am very little of a traveler.

Henry David Thoreau
Travel, Littles, Traveler
Henry David Thoreau, Bradford Torrey, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn (1906). “The Writings of Henry David Thoreau ....”

Is not the midnight like Central Africa to most of us? Are we not tempted to explore it,--to penetrate to the shores of its Lake Tchad, and discover the source of its Nile, perchance the Mountains of the Moon? Who knows what fertility and beauty, moral and natural, are to be found? In the Mountains of the Moon, in the Central Africa of the night, there is where all Niles have their hidden heads. The expeditions up the Nile as yet extend but to the Cataracts, or perchance to the mouth of the White Nile; but it is the black Nile that concerns us.

Henry David Thoreau
Travel, Moon, Night
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.1258, Delphi Classics

To the sick the doctors wisely recommend a change of air and scenery.

Henry David Thoreau
Travel, Health, Doctors
Henry David Thoreau, Nancy L. Rosenblum (1996). “Thoreau: Political Writings”, p.91, Cambridge University Press

The other side of the globe is but the home of our correspondent. Our voyaging is only great-circle sailing.

Henry David Thoreau
Travel, Home, Circles
Henry David Thoreau (2004). “Walden: 150th Anniversary Illustrated Edition of the American Classic”, p.311, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

There is, however, this consolation to the most way-worn traveler, upon the dustiest road, that the path his feet describe is so perfectly symbolical of human life,--now climbing the hills, now descending into the vales. From the summits he beholds the heavens and the horizon, from the vales he looks up to the heights again. He is treading his old lessons still, and though he may be very weary and travel-worn, it is yet sincere experience.

Henry David Thoreau
Life, Travel, Feet
Henry David Thoreau (1992). “The Essays of Henry David Thoreau”, p.103, Rowman & Littlefield

I do believe that the outward and the inward life correspond; that if any should succeed to live a higher life, others would not know of it; that difference and distance are one. To set about living a true life is to go on a journey to a distant country, gradually to find ourselves surrounded by new scenes and men; and as long as the old are around me, I know that I am not in any true sense living a new or a better life.

Henry David Thoreau
Life, Country, Travel
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.356, Penguin

Only the traveling is good which reveals to me the value of home and enables me to enjoy it better.

Henry David Thoreau
Travel, Home, Tourism
Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.156, Courier Corporation

A man may travel fast enough and earn his living on the road.

Henry David Thoreau
Travel, Men, Simplicity
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.665, Simon and Schuster

Continued traveling is far from productive. It begins with wearing away the soles of the shoes, and making the feet sore, and erelong it will wear a man clean up, after making his heart sore into the bargain. I have observed that the afterlife of those who have traveled much is very pathetic.

Henry David Thoreau
Travel, Heart, Men
Henry David Thoreau (2017). “The Most Alive is the Wildest – Thoreau’s Complete Works on Living in Harmony with the Nature: Walden, Walking, Night and Moonlight, The Highland Light, A Winter Walk, The Maine Woods, A Walk to Wachusett, The Landlord, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Autumnal Tints, Wild Apples…”, p.455, e-artnow

I had often stood on the banks of the Concord, watching the lapse of the current, an emblem of all progress, following the same law with the system, with time, and all that is madeand at last I resolved to launch myself on its bosom and float whither it would bear me.

Henry David Thoreau
Travel, Law, Progress

He may travel who can subsist on the wild fruits and game of the most cultivated country.

Henry David Thoreau
Country, Travel, Games
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.665, Simon and Schuster

He who rides and keeps the beaten track studies the fences chiefly.

Henry David Thoreau
Travel, Track, Study
Henry David Thoreau (1873). “The Maine Woods”, p.87

We do not associate the idea of antiquity with the ocean, nor wonder how it looked a thousand years ago, as we do of the land, for it was equally wild and unfathomable always.

Henry David Thoreau
Nature, Travel, Ocean
Henry David Thoreau (1866). “Cape Cod”, p.174

A traveler who looks at things with an impartial eye may see what the oldest inhabitant has not observed.

Henry David Thoreau
Travel, Home, Eye
Henry David Thoreau (1999). “Material Faith: Thoreau on Science”, p.27, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Give me the old familiar walk, postoffice and all, with this ever new self, with this infinite expectation and faith, which does not know when it is beaten. We'll go nutting once more. We'll pluck the nut of the world, and crack it in the winter evenings. Theaters and all other sightseeing are puppet-shows in comparison. I will take another walk to the Cliff, another row on the river, another skate on the meadow, be out in the first snow, and associate with the winter birds. Here I am at home. In the bare and bleached crust of the earth I recognize my friend.

Henry David Thoreau
Travel, Home, Winter

The discoveries which we make abroad are special and particular; those which we make at home are general and significant. The further off, the nearer the surface. The nearer home, the deeper.

Henry David Thoreau
Travel, Home, Discovery
Henry David Thoreau (1993). “A Year in Thoreau's Journal: 1851”, p.205, Penguin

Some do not walk at all; others walk in the highways; a few walk across lots. Roads are made for horses and men of business. I do not travel in them much, comparatively, because I am not in a hurry to get to any tavern or grocery or livery-stable or depot to which they lead.

Henry David Thoreau
Travel, Horse, Home
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “Essays of Henry David Thoreau - Walking”, p.10, Editora Dracaena

This is a common experience in my traveling. I plod along, thinking what a miserable world this is and what miserable fellows we that inhabit it, wondering what it is tempts men to live in it; but anon I leave the towns behind and am lost in some boundless heath, and life becomes gradually more tolerable, if not even glorious.

Henry David Thoreau
Travel, Home, Men
Henry David Thoreau (1962). “Journal”

It is far more independent to travel on foot. You have to sacrifice so much to the horse. You cannot choose the most agreeable places in which to spend the noon., commanding the finest views, because commonly there is no water there, or you cannot get there with your horse.

Henry David Thoreau
Travel, Horse, Home
Henry David Thoreau (1999). “Elevating Ourselves: Thoreau on Mountains”, p.8, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

It takes a man of genius to travel in his own country, in his native village; to make any progress between his door and his gate.

Henry David Thoreau
Country, Travel, Home
Henry David Thoreau, Jeffrey S. Cramer (2007). “I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau”, p.86, Yale University Press

When you are starting away, leaving your more familiar fields, for a little adventure like a walk, you look at every object with a traveler's, or at least with historical, eyes; you pause on the first bridge, where an ordinary walk hardly commences, and begin to observe and moralize like a traveler. It is worth the while to see your native village thus sometimes, as if you were a traveler passing through it, commenting on your neighbors as strangers.

Henry David Thoreau
Travel, Eye, Home
Henry David Thoreau (1962). “The journal of Henry D. Thoreau”

There would be this advantage in traveling in your own country, even in your own neighborhood, that you would be so thoroughly prepared to understand what you saw you would make fewer traveler's mistakes.

Henry David Thoreau
Country, Travel, Mistake

If a man is rich and strong anywhere, it must be on his native soil. Here I have been these forty years learning the language of these fields that I may the better express myself. If I should travel to the prairies, I should much less understand them, and my past life would serve me but ill to describe them. Many a weed here stands for more of life to me than the big trees of California would if I should go there. We need only travel enough to give our intellects an airing.

Henry David Thoreau
Weed, Travel, Strong
Henry David Thoreau, Jeffrey S. Cramer (2007). “I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau”, p.346, Yale University Press

When it was proposed to me to go abroad, rub oft some rust, and better my condition in a worldly sense, I fear lest my life will lose some of its homeliness. If these fields and streams and woods, the phenomena of nature here, and the simple occupations of the inhabitants should cease to interest and inspire me, no culture or wealth would atone for the loss.

Henry David Thoreau
Travel, Home, Loss

I want nothing new, if I can have but a tithe of the old secured to me. I will spurn all wealth beside. Think of the consummate folly of attempting to go away from here! When the constant endeavor should be to get nearer and nearer here!

Henry David Thoreau
Travel, Home, Thinking
Henry David Thoreau (1963). “Thoreau: people, principles, and politics”

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