Henry David Thoreau Quotes About Writing

• 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

• 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

• How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Life, Beautiful, Book

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.8, Penguin

• 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

• To some extent, mythology is only the most ancient history and biography. So far from being false or fabulous in the common sense,it contains only enduring and essential truth, the I and you, the here and there, the now and then, being omitted. Either time or rare wisdom writes it.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Wisdom, Truth, Writing

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.42, Xist Publishing

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• Writing may be either the record of a deed or a deed. It is nobler when it is a deed.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Writing, Records, Deeds

• The poet will write for his peers alone. He will remember only that he saw truth and beauty from his position, and expect the time when a vision as broad shall overlook the same field as freely.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Writing, Vision, Peers

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “The Illustrated "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers"”, p.341, Princeton University Press

• 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 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

• 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

• 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

• The scholar may be sure that he writes the tougher truth for the calluses on his palms. They give firmness to the sentence. Indeed, the mind never makes a great and successful effort, without a corresponding energy of the body.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Writing, Successful, Giving

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

• 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”

• Let no one think that I do not love the old ministers. They were, probably, the best men in their generation, and they deserve that their biographies should fill the pages of the town histories. If I could but hear the "glad tidings" of which they tell, and which, perchance, they heard, I might write in a worthier strain than this.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Writing, Men, Thinking

  Henry David Thoreau (2008). “Cape Cod: Illustrated Edition of the American Classic”, p.48, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Paper is cheap, and authors need not now erase one book before they write another. Instead of cultivating the earth for wheat andpotatoes, they cultivate literature, and fill a place in the Republic of Letters. Or they would fain write for fame merely, as others actually raise crops of grain to be distilled into brandy.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Book, Writing, Paper

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

• 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

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