Henry David Thoreau Quotes About Dogs

• When a dog runs at you, whistle for him.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Inspirational, Running, Dog

  Henry David Thoreau (2011). “The Journal of Henry David Thoreau, 1837-1861”, p.10, New York Review of Books

• It often happens that a man is more humanely related to a cat or dog than to any human being.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Dog, Cat, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (1993). “A Year in Thoreau's Journal: 1851”, p.49, Penguin

• It often happens that a man develops a deeper love and friendship with his pet cat or dog than he does with most of the other humans in his life.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Dog, Cat, Men

• And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter, - we need never read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications?

  Henry David Thoreau

  Running, Dog, Memorable

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “Walden”, p.68, Xist Publishing

• The very dogs that sullenly bay the moon from farm-yards in these nights excite more heroism in our breasts than all the civil exhortations or war sermons of the age.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Dog, War, Moon

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.29, Xist Publishing

• As for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Life, Dog, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (1882). “Walden”, p.93

• The hounding of a dog pursuing a fox or other animal in the horizon may have first suggested the notes of the hunting-horn to alternate with and relieve the lungs of the dog. This natural bugle long resounded in the woods of the ancient world before the horn was invented.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Music, Dog, Animal

  Henry David Thoreau (2004). “Walden and Other Writings”, p.44, Bantam Classics

• 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”

• The man of genius, like a dog with a bone, or the slave who has swallowed a diamond, or a patient with the gravel, sits afar and retired, off the road, hangs out no sign of refreshment for man and beast, but says, by all possible hints and signs, I wish to be alone,--good-by,--fare-well. But the Landlord can afford to live without privacy.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Dog, Men, Solitude

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.1020, Delphi Classics

• All these sounds, the crowing of cocks, the baying of dogs, and the hum of insects at noon, are the evidence of nature's health orsound state.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Dog, Nature, Sound

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.45, Delphi Classics

• I rejoice that horses and steers have to be broken before they can be made the slaves of men, and that men themselves have some wild oats still left to sow before they become submissive members of society. Undoubtedly, all men are not equally fit subjects for civilization; and because the majority, like dogs and sheep, are tame by inherited disposition, this is no reason why the others should have their natures broken that they may be reduced to the same level.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Dog, Horse, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2002). “The Essays of Henry D. Thoreau: Selected and Edited by Lewis Hyde”, p.252, North Point Press

• As I walked in the woods to see the birds and squirrels, so I walked in the village to see the men and boys; instead of the wind among the pines I heard the carts rattle. In one direction from my house there was a colony of muskrats in the river meadows; under the grove of elms and buttonwoods in the other horizon was a village of busy men, as curious to me as if they had been prarie-dogs, each sitting at the mouth of its burrow, or running over to a neighbor's to gossip. I went there frequently to observe their habits.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Running, Dog, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2017). “Walden: Life in the Woods”, p.105, Gibbs Smith

• Some are dinning in our ears that we Americans, and moderns generally, are intellectual dwarfs compared with the ancients, or eventhe Elizabethan men. But what is that to the purpose? A living dog is better than a dead lion. Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmy that he can? Let every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Dog, Men, Race

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “Walden”, p.231, Xist Publishing

• In some countries a hunting parson is no uncommon sight. Such a one might make a good shepherd's dog, but is far from being the Good Shepherd.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Country, Dog, Hunting

  Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Walden”, p.138, Cosimo, Inc.

• The commonest and cheapest sounds, as the barking of a dog, produce the same effect on fresh and healthy ears that the rarest music does. It depends on your appetite for sound. Just as a crust is sweeter to a healthy appetite than confectionery to a pampered or diseased one.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Dog, Healthy, Sound

  Henry David Thoreau, Wesley T. Mott, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas (2005). “Bonds of Affection: Thoreau on Dogs and Cats”, p.32, Univ of Massachusetts Press

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