Henry David Thoreau Quotes About Travel

• Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Wisdom, Travel, Character

• The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Witty, Travel, Work

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “Walden”, p.52, Xist Publishing

• We should come home from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day with new experience and character.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Travel, Home, Adventure

  Henry David Thoreau, Laura Ross (2009). “Walden, Or, Life in the Woods: Bold-faced Ideas for Living a Truly Transcendent Life”, p.273, Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.

• Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Nature, Travel, Hands

  Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.149, Courier Corporation

• Methinks that the moment my legs began to move, my thoughts began to flow.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Running, Travel, Moving

• I cannot but regard it as a kindness in those who have the steering of me that, by the want of pecuniary wealth, I have been nailed dawn to this my native region so long and steadily, and made to study and love this spot of earth more and more. What would signify in comparison a thin and diffused love and knowledge of the whole earth instead, got by wandering? The traveler's is but a barren and comfortless condition. Wealth will not buy a man a home in nature-house nor farm there. The man of business does not by his business earn a residence in nature, but is denaturalized rather.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Travel, Kindness, Home

• I have climbed several higher mountains without guide or path, and have found, as might be expected, that it takes only more time and patience commonly than to travel the smoothest highway.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Travel, Mountain, Might

  Henry David Thoreau (1999). “Elevating Ourselves: Thoreau on Mountains”, p.21, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• A man must generally get away some hundreds or thousands of miles from home before he can be said to begin his travels. Why not begin his travels at home? Would he have to go far or look very closely to discover novelties? The traveler who, in this sense, pursues his travels at home, has the advantage at any rate of a long residence in the country to make his observations correct and profitable. Now the American goes to England, while the Englishman comes to America, in order to describe the country.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Country, Travel, Home

  Henry David Thoreau, Jeffrey S. Cramer (2007). “I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau”, p.86, Yale University Press

• The discoveries which we make abroad are special and particular; those which we make at home are general and significant. The further off, the nearer the surface. The nearer home, the deeper.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Travel, Home, Discovery

  Henry David Thoreau (1993). “A Year in Thoreau's Journal: 1851”, p.205, Penguin

• We need only travel enough to give our intellects an airing.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Travel, Memorable, Intelligent

  Henry David Thoreau (1894). “The Writings of Henry David Thoreau: With Bibliographical Introductions and Full Indexes”

• He who is only a traveler learns things at second-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority. We are most interested when science reports what those men already know practically or instinctively, for that alone is a true humanity, or account of human experience.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Travel, Knowledge, Men

  Henry David Thoreau, Michael McCurdy, Terry Tempest Williams (2010). “Walden”, p.118, Shambhala Publications

• Some do not walk at all; others walk in the highways; a few walk across lots. Roads are made for horses and men of business. I do not travel in them much, comparatively, because I am not in a hurry to get to any tavern or grocery or livery-stable or depot to which they lead.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Travel, Horse, Home

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “Essays of Henry David Thoreau - Walking”, p.10, Editora Dracaena

• I want nothing new, if I can have but a tithe of the old secured to me. I will spurn all wealth beside. Think of the consummate folly of attempting to go away from here! When the constant endeavor should be to get nearer and nearer here!

  Henry David Thoreau

  Travel, Home, Thinking

  Henry David Thoreau (1963). “Thoreau: people, principles, and politics”

• It is far more independent to travel on foot. You have to sacrifice so much to the horse. You cannot choose the most agreeable places in which to spend the noon., commanding the finest views, because commonly there is no water there, or you cannot get there with your horse.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Travel, Horse, Home

  Henry David Thoreau (1999). “Elevating Ourselves: Thoreau on Mountains”, p.8, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• If a man is rich and strong anywhere, it must be on his native soil. Here I have been these forty years learning the language of these fields that I may the better express myself. If I should travel to the prairies, I should much less understand them, and my past life would serve me but ill to describe them. Many a weed here stands for more of life to me than the big trees of California would if I should go there. We need only travel enough to give our intellects an airing.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Weed, Travel, Strong

  Henry David Thoreau, Jeffrey S. Cramer (2007). “I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau”, p.346, Yale University Press

• When it was proposed to me to go abroad, rub oft some rust, and better my condition in a worldly sense, I fear lest my life will lose some of its homeliness. If these fields and streams and woods, the phenomena of nature here, and the simple occupations of the inhabitants should cease to interest and inspire me, no culture or wealth would atone for the loss.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Travel, Home, Loss

• It takes a man of genius to travel in his own country, in his native village; to make any progress between his door and his gate.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Country, Travel, Home

  Henry David Thoreau, Jeffrey S. Cramer (2007). “I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau”, p.86, Yale University Press

• This is a common experience in my traveling. I plod along, thinking what a miserable world this is and what miserable fellows we that inhabit it, wondering what it is tempts men to live in it; but anon I leave the towns behind and am lost in some boundless heath, and life becomes gradually more tolerable, if not even glorious.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Travel, Home, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (1962). “Journal”

• A traveler who looks at things with an impartial eye may see what the oldest inhabitant has not observed.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Travel, Home, Eye

  Henry David Thoreau (1999). “Material Faith: Thoreau on Science”, p.27, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Give me the old familiar walk, postoffice and all, with this ever new self, with this infinite expectation and faith, which does not know when it is beaten. We'll go nutting once more. We'll pluck the nut of the world, and crack it in the winter evenings. Theaters and all other sightseeing are puppet-shows in comparison. I will take another walk to the Cliff, another row on the river, another skate on the meadow, be out in the first snow, and associate with the winter birds. Here I am at home. In the bare and bleached crust of the earth I recognize my friend.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Travel, Home, Winter

• When you are starting away, leaving your more familiar fields, for a little adventure like a walk, you look at every object with a traveler's, or at least with historical, eyes; you pause on the first bridge, where an ordinary walk hardly commences, and begin to observe and moralize like a traveler. It is worth the while to see your native village thus sometimes, as if you were a traveler passing through it, commenting on your neighbors as strangers.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Travel, Eye, Home

  Henry David Thoreau (1962). “The journal of Henry D. Thoreau”

• 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

• There would be this advantage in traveling in your own country, even in your own neighborhood, that you would be so thoroughly prepared to understand what you saw you would make fewer traveler's mistakes.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Country, Travel, Mistake

• We do not associate the idea of antiquity with the ocean, nor wonder how it looked a thousand years ago, as we do of the land, for it was equally wild and unfathomable always.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Nature, Travel, Ocean

  Henry David Thoreau (1866). “Cape Cod”, p.174

• I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Travel, Journey, Wish

  Henry David Thoreau (1995). “Walden, Or, Life in the Woods”, p.209, Courier Corporation

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