Home > Work > The Quotable Thoreau
1 " In books, that which is most generally interesting is what comes home to the most cherished private experience of the greatest number. It is not the book of him who has travelled the farthest over the surface of the globe, but of him who has lived the deepest and been the most at home. "
― Henry David Thoreau , The Quotable Thoreau
2 " The doctors are all agreed that I am suffering from want of society. Was never a case like it. First, I did not know that I was suffering at all. Secondly, as an Irishman might say, I had thought it was indigestion of the society I got. "
3 " The silence rings—it is musical & thrills me. A night in which the silence was audible—I hear the unspeakable. "
4 " The man I meet with is not often so instructive as the silence he breaks. "
5 " Silence is the communing of a conscious soul with itself. "
6 " It is a very remarkable and significant fact that though no man is quite well or healthy yet every one believes practically that health is the rule & disease the exception. "
7 " As some heads cannot carry much wine, so it would seem that I cannot bear so much society as you can. I have an immense appetite for solitude, like an infant for sleep, and if I don’t get enough of it this year I shall cry all the next. "
8 " If we would aim at perfection in any thing, simplicity must not be overlooked. "
9 " I am thinking by what long discipline and at what cost a man learns to speak simply at last. "
10 " I am of the nature of Stone. It takes the summer’s sun to warm it. "
11 " With what infinite & unwearied expectation and proclamations the cocks usher in every dawn, as if there had never been one before. "
12 " I am surprised that we make no more ado about echoes. They are almost the only kindred voices that I hear. "
13 " Wherever men have lived there is a story to be told, and it depends chiefly on the story-teller or historian whether it is interesting or not. "
