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Henry David Thoreau Quotes about Writing

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If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.

If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.

Henry David Thoreau
Writing, Achievement, Done
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.234, Xist Publishing

Writing your name can lead to writing sentences. And the next thing you'll be doing is writing paragraphs, and then books. And then you'll be in as much trouble as I am!

Henry David Thoreau
Book, Writing, Names

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

Henry David Thoreau
Writing, Long, Insightful
Letter to Harrison Blake, 16 Nov. 1857 See Pascal 1; Woodrow Wilson 25

Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.

Henry David Thoreau
Writing, Creativity, Iron
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.137, Penguin

A person who chooses to die or to risk death demonstrates that there are values, principles, maxims, that are more valuable to him than is life itself. In short, he places his immortal self above his mortal self. Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.

Henry David Thoreau
Writing, Self, Risk

A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure.

Henry David Thoreau
Morning, Writing, Color
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “A Week On The Concord And Merrimack Rivers (Annotated Edition)”, p.86, Jazzybee Verlag

The more you have thought and written on a given theme, the more you can still write. Thought breeds thought. It grows under your hands.

Henry David Thoreau
Writing, Hands, Given
Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.213, Courier Corporation

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

Henry David Thoreau
Writing, Class, Two
Henry David Thoreau, Jeffrey S. Cramer (2007). “I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau”, p.27, Yale University Press

We can never safely exceed the actual facts in our narratives. Of pure invention, such as some suppose, there is no instance. To write a true work of fiction even is only to take leisure and liberty to describe some things more exactly as they are.

Henry David Thoreau
Writing, Liberty, Facts
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “The Illustrated "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers"”, p.325, Princeton University Press

Men must speak English who can write Sanskrit; they must speak a modern language who write, perchance, an ancient and universal one.

Henry David Thoreau
Writing, Men, Speak English
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Selected Essays of Henry David Thoreau”, p.81, Simon and Schuster

I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.

Henry David Thoreau
Determination, Sleep, Writing
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.318, Simon and Schuster

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

Henry David Thoreau
Writing, Poetry, Today
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.59, Delphi Classics

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

Henry David Thoreau
Writing, Gusto, Wells
Henry David Thoreau (1960). “H. D. Thoreau, a Writer's Journal”, p.66, Courier Corporation

Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.

Henry David Thoreau
Writing, Luck, Literature
Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.24, Courier Corporation

Write while the heat is in you.

Henry David Thoreau
Writing, Heat, Great Writing
Henry David Thoreau (2006). “Thoreau and the Art of Life: Precepts and Principles”, p.13, Heron Dance Press

Who cares what a man's style is, so it is intelligible,--as intelligible as his thought. Literally and really, the style is no more than the stylus, the pen he writes with; and it is not worth scraping and polishing, and gilding, unless it will write his thoughts the better for it. It is something for use, and not to look at. The question for us is, not whether Pope had a fine style, wrote with a peacock's feather, but whether he uttered useful thoughts.

Henry David Thoreau
Writing, Men, Style
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.272, Simon and Schuster

When I read some of the rules for speaking and writing the English language correctly, I think any fool can make a rule, and every fool will mind it.

Henry David Thoreau
Writing, Thinking, Mind
Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.213, Courier Corporation

Steady labor with the hands, which engrosses the attention also, is unquestionably the best method of removing palaver and sentimentality out of one's style, both of speaking and writing.

Henry David Thoreau
Writing, Hands, Style
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.517, Simon and Schuster

It would be worthy of the age to print together the collected Scriptures or Sacred Writings of the several nations, the Chinese, the Hindoos, the Persians, the Hebrews, and others, as the Scripture of mankind. The New Testament is still, perhaps, too much on the lips and in the hearts of men to be called a Scripture in this sense. Such a juxtaposition and comparison might help to liberalize the faith of men.... This would be the Bible, or Book of Books, which let the missionaries carry to the uttermost parts of the earth.

Henry David Thoreau
Book, Writing, Heart
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.101, Xist Publishing

Literary gentlemen, editors, and critics think that they know how to write, because they have studied grammar and rhetoric; but they are egregiously mistaken. The art of composition is as simple as the discharge of a bullet from a rifle, and its masterpieces imply an infinitely greater force behind them.

Henry David Thoreau
Art, Writing, Simple
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.389, Penguin

Methinks some creeds in vestries and churches do forget the hunter wrapped in furs by the Great Slave Lake, and that the Esquimauxsledges are drawn by dogs, and in the twilight of the northern night the hunter does not give over to follow the seal and walrus on the ice. They are of sick and diseased imaginations who would toll the world's knell so soon. Cannot these sedentary sects do better than prepare the shrouds and write the epitaphs of those other busy living men? The practical faith of all men belies the preacher's consolation.

Henry David Thoreau
Dog, Twilight, Writing
Henry David Thoreau (1906). “The Writings of Henry David Thoreau: Journal, ed. by B. Torrey, 1837-1846, 1850-Nov. 3, 1861”

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.

Henry David Thoreau
Book, Reading, Writing
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.83, Delphi Classics

No man's thoughts are new, but the style of their expression is the never-failing novelty which cheers and refreshes men. If we were to answer the question, whether the mass of men, as we know them, talk as the standard authors and reviewers write, or rather as this man writes, we should say that he alone begins to write their language at all.

Henry David Thoreau
Cheer, Writing, Men
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.272, Simon and Schuster

I cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts in; they are commonly ruled for dollars and cents.

Henry David Thoreau
Book, Writing, Dollars

Today you may write a chapter on the advantages of traveling, and tomorrow you may write another chapter on the advantages of not traveling.

Henry David Thoreau
Travel, Home, Writing
Henry David Thoreau (1993). “A Year in Thoreau's Journal: 1851”, p.280, Penguin

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