Walden

By

Henry David Thoreau

QUOTATION: As for the inlet or outlet of Walden, I have not yet discovered any but rain and snow and evaporation, though perhaps, with a thermometer and a line, such places may be found.
ATTRIBUTION: Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), U.S. philosopher, author, naturalist. Walden (1854), in The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, vol. 2, p. 322, Houghton Mifflin (1906).

QUOTATION: Of all the characters I have known, perhaps Walden wears best, and best preserves its purity. Many men have been likened to it, but few deserve that honor. Though the woodchoppers have laid bare first this shore and then that, and the Irish have built their sties by it, and the railroad has infringed on its border, and the ice-men have skimmed it once, it is itself unchanged, the same water which my youthful eyes fell on; all the change is in me.
ATTRIBUTION: Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), U.S. philosopher, author, naturalist. Walden (1854), in The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, vol. 2, p. 214, Houghton Mifflin (1906).

QUOTATION: I do not suppose that I have attained to obscurity, but I should be proud if no more fatal fault were found with my pages ... than was found with the Walden ice.
ATTRIBUTION: Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), U.S. philosopher, author, naturalist. Walden (1854), in The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, vol. 2, p. 358, Houghton Mifflin (1906).

QUOTATION: Oh, one world at a time!
ATTRIBUTION: Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), U.S. philosopher, author, naturalist. Quoted in Henry D. Thoreau, F.B. Sanborn (1882).

QUOTATION: Before I finally went into winter quarters in November, I used to resort to the north- east side of Walden, which the sun, reflected from the pitch pine woods and the stony shore, made the fireside of the pond; it is so much pleasanter and wholesomer to be warmed by the sun while you can be, than by an artificial fire. I thus warmed myself by the still glowing embers which the summer, like a departed hunter, had left.
ATTRIBUTION: Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), U.S. philosopher, author, naturalist. Walden (1854), in The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, vol. 2, pp. 265-266, Houghton Mifflin (1906).

QUOTATION: When a man dies he kicks the dust.
ATTRIBUTION: Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), U.S. philosopher, author, naturalist. Walden (1854), in The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, vol. 2, p. 75, Houghton Mifflin (1906).

QUOTATION: In the right stage of the weather a pond fires its evening gun with great regularity.
ATTRIBUTION: Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), U.S. philosopher, author, naturalist. Walden (1854), in The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, vol. 2, p. 333, Houghton Mifflin (1906).

QUOTATION: I am no more lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden Pond itself. What company has that lonely lake, I pray?
ATTRIBUTION: Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), U.S. philosopher, author, naturalist. Walden (1854), in The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, vol. 2, p. 152, Houghton Mifflin (1906).

QUOTATION: While England endeavors to cure the potato-rot, will not any endeavor to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so much more widely and fatally?
ATTRIBUTION: Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), U.S. philosopher, author, naturalist. Walden (1854), in The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, vol. 2, p. 358, Houghton Mifflin (1906).

QUOTATION: In sane moments we regard only the facts, the case that is.
ATTRIBUTION: Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), U.S. philosopher, author, naturalist. Walden (1854), in The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, vol. 2, p. 360, Houghton Mifflin (1906).

[1] - [2] - [3] - [4]