Quote collection
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"In those days, when my hands were much employed, I read but little, but the least scraps of paper which lay on the ground, my holder, or tablecloth, afforded me as much entertainment, in fact answered the same purpose as the Iliad."
"Since you are my readers, and I have not been much of a traveler, I will not talk about people a thousand miles off, but come as near home as I can. As the time is short, I will leave out all the flattery, and retain all the criticism."
"It is a relief to read some true book, wherein all are equally dead,--equally alive. I think the best parts of Shakespeare would only be enhanced by the most thrilling and affecting events. I have found it so. And so much the more, as they are not intended for consolation."
"The fishermen say that the "thundering of the pond" scares the fishes and prevents their biting."
"The sport of digging the bait is nearly equal to that of catching the fish, when one's appetite is not too keen."
"It is good even to be a fisherman in summer and in winter."
"A modern author would have died in infancy in a ruder age."
"I should fear the infinite power and inflexible justice of the almighty mortal hardly as yet apotheosized, so wholly masculine, with no sister Juno, no Apollo, no Venus, nor Minerva, to intercede for me, thumoi phileousa te, kedomene te."
"There is a sort of homely truth and naturalness in some books which is very rare to find, and yet looks cheap enough. There may benothing lofty in the sentiment, or fine in the expression, but it is careless country talk. Homeliness is almost as great a merit in a book as in a house, if the reader would abide there. It is next to beauty, and a very high art. Some have this merit only."
"If I ever see more clearly at one time than at another, the medium through which I see is clearer."
"We do not learn much from learned books, but from true, sincere, human books, from frank and honest biographies."
"Do not read the newspapers."
"I never read a novel, they have so little real life and thought in them."
"Some hard and dry book in a dead language, which you have found it impossible to read at home, but for which you still have a lingering regard, is the best to carry with you on a journey."
"I am awaked almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. It interrupts my dreams. There is no sabbath."
"How many a poor immortal soul I have met well-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it [an oversized home]."
"I do not speak to those who are well employed, in whatever circumstances, and they know whether they are well employed or not; but mainly to the mass of men who are discontented, and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they might improve them."
"There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dullness. When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics and shopkeepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all the afternoon too, sitting with crossed legs, so many of them - as if the legs were made to sit upon, and not to stand or walk upon."
"I have much to learn of the Indian, nothing of the missionary."
"This generation has come into the world fatally late for some enterprises. Go where we will on the surface of things, men have been there before us.... But the lives of men, though more extended laterally in their range, are still as shallow as ever."