Henry David Thoreau Quotes About Sailing

• The sail, the play of its pulse so like our own lives: so thin and yet so full of life, so noiseless when it labors hardest, so noisy and impatient when least effective.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Play, Sailing, Pulse

  Henry David Thoreau (1873). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.381

• Men go back to the mountains, as they go back to sailing ships at sea, because in the mountains and on the sea they must face up.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Inspirational, Funny, Men

• The stars are the jewels of the night, and perchance surpass anything which day has to show. A companion with whom I was sailing one very windy but bright moonlight night, when the stars were few and faint, thought that a man could get along with them,-though he was considerably reduced in his circumstances,-that they were a kind of bread and cheese that never failed.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Stars, Night, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.1261, Delphi Classics

• It is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, ina government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one's being alone.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Ocean, Men, Boys

  Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Walden”, p.208, Cosimo, Inc.

• For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly tack and veer and hold the middle of the pond, far from the sportsman;... but what beside safety they got by sailing in the middle of Walden I do not know, unless they love its water for the same reason that I do.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Fall, Ducks, Safety

  Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Walden”, p.153, Cosimo, Inc.

• One inconvenience I sometimes experienced in so small a house, the difficulty of getting to a sufficient distance from my guest when we began to utter the big thoughts in big words. You want room for your thoughts to get into sailing trim and run a course or two before they make their port. The bullet of your thought must have overcome its lateral and ricochet motion and fallen into its last and steady course before it reaches the ear of the hearer, else it may plow out again through the side of his head.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Running, Distance, Communication

  Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Walden”, p.91, Cosimo, Inc.

• The other side of the globe is but the home of our correspondent. Our voyaging is only great-circle sailing.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Travel, Home, Circles

  Henry David Thoreau (2004). “Walden: 150th Anniversary Illustrated Edition of the American Classic”, p.311, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• He is the best sailor who can steer within the fewest points of the wind, and extract a motive power out of the greatest obstacles. Most begin to veer and tack as soon as the wind changes from aft, and as within the tropics it does not blow from all points of the compass, there are some harbors which they can never reach.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Blow, Wind, Sailing

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.688, Simon and Schuster

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