Henry David Thoreau Quotes

A great value of antiquity lies in the fact that its writings are the only ones that modern men still read with exactness.

Sometimes when you read the Bible, you find yourself asking, "How does this book know that about me? How does it know that about our world - especially when it was written so long ago?"

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind.

How marvelous books are, crossing worlds and centuries, defeating ignorance and, finally, cruel time itself.

To avoid a future of war, crime, and bankruptcy, the individual must begin to plan his own destiny, and the best source for the necessary information comes down to us through the writings of the ancients. The greatest knowledge of all time should be available ... in a book that would be a monument, not merely a coffin.

Five minutes in an old book quickly reveals that most of what is being sold today as new insights into human behavior is merely the rediscovery of knowledge we have had for centuries.

For what are the classics but the noblest thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old.

But the images of men's wits and knowledges remain in books, exempted from the wrong of time, and capable of perpetual renovation.

In these days of conflict between ancient and modern studies, there must surely be something to be said for a study which did not begin with Pythagoras, and will not end with Einstein, but is the oldest and the youngest of all.

And although she was sometimes dissatisfied with herself, she felt unable to go beyond her own limitations. Books were safer.

I brought Bhagawad Gita as a gift for the Japanese PM...I don't have anything better than Gita to give & nor does the World has anything better to receive.

It is the obvious which is so difficult to see most of the time. People say 'It's as plain as the nose on your face.' But how much of the nose on your face can you see, unless someone holds a mirror up to you?

I have to admit that I was terrified of ending the book, precisely because I go around saying about pretty much every book I read, "It fell apart at the end." I have friends who are waiting to ridicule me forever.

Unfortunately, for the vast majority of us, a vast majority of the time, we surrender our true autonomy to this illusion of agency. I'm as guilty as anybody, and I write about it in a book. I'm not condemning anybody.

You have to be smart enough to see the world for yourself and honest. The whole book-publicity thing is not really honest, at base.

The Vedas give information on various subjects. They have come together and form one book. And in later times, when other subjects were separated from religion - when astronomy and astrology were taken out of religion - these subjects, being connected with the Vedas and being ancient, were considered very holy.

Keeping a journal has taught me that there is not so much new in your life as you sometimes think. When you re-read your journal you find out that your latest discovery is something you already found out five years ago. Still, it is true that one penetrates deeper and deeper into the same ideas and the same experiences.

If I point to anything that makes me who I am, it's that I have a whole lot of common sense. I've got a good mind and a good ability to read people and situations.

My behavior is nonetheless, deplorable. Unfortunately, I'm quite prone to such bouts of deplorability--take for instance, my fondness for reading books at the dinner table.

Something about the possession of a book - an object that can contain infinite fables, words of wisdom, chronicles of times gone by, humorous anecdotes and divine revelation - endows the reader with the power of creating a story, and the listener with a sense of being present at the moment of creation.

No book can teach you about yourself, no psychologist, none of the professors or philosophers. What they can teach you is what they think you are or what they think you should be.

Put away the book, the description, the tradition, the authority, and take the journey of self-discovery.

Books are the way the dead talk to the living.

When a new book appears one should read an old one.

To be free from convention is not to spurn it but not to be deceived by it.