Henry David Thoreau Quotes About Writing

• Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Writing, Creativity, Iron

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.137, Penguin

• Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Writing, Long, Insightful

  Letter to Harrison Blake, 16 Nov. 1857 See Pascal 1; Woodrow Wilson 25

• How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Life, Beautiful, Book

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.8, Penguin

• Writing your name can lead to writing sentences. And the next thing you'll be doing is writing paragraphs, and then books. And then you'll be in as much trouble as I am!

  Henry David Thoreau

  Book, Writing, Names

• To some extent, mythology is only the most ancient history and biography. So far from being false or fabulous in the common sense,it contains only enduring and essential truth, the I and you, the here and there, the now and then, being omitted. Either time or rare wisdom writes it.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Wisdom, Truth, Writing

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.42, Xist Publishing

• If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Writing, Achievement, Done

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.234, Xist Publishing

• When I read some of the rules for speaking and writing the English language correctly, I think any fool can make a rule, and every fool will mind it.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Writing, Thinking, Mind

  Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.213, Courier Corporation

• I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Determination, Sleep, Writing

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.318, Simon and Schuster

• Write while the heat is in you.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Writing, Heat, Great Writing

  Henry David Thoreau (2006). “Thoreau and the Art of Life: Precepts and Principles”, p.13, Heron Dance Press

• A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Morning, Writing, Color

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “A Week On The Concord And Merrimack Rivers (Annotated Edition)”, p.86, Jazzybee Verlag

• 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

• We cannot write well or truly but what we write with gusto.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Writing, Gusto, Wells

  Henry David Thoreau (1960). “H. D. Thoreau, a Writer's Journal”, p.66, Courier Corporation

• The more you have thought and written on a given theme, the more you can still write. Thought breeds thought. It grows under your hands.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Writing, Hands, Given

  Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.213, Courier Corporation

• Writing may be either the record of a deed or a deed. It is nobler when it is a deed.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Writing, Records, Deeds

• Men must speak English who can write Sanskrit; they must speak a modern language who write, perchance, an ancient and universal one.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Writing, Men, Speak English

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Selected Essays of Henry David Thoreau”, p.81, Simon and Schuster

• Let no one think that I do not love the old ministers. They were, probably, the best men in their generation, and they deserve that their biographies should fill the pages of the town histories. If I could but hear the "glad tidings" of which they tell, and which, perchance, they heard, I might write in a worthier strain than this.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Writing, Men, Thinking

  Henry David Thoreau (2008). “Cape Cod: Illustrated Edition of the American Classic”, p.48, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Paper is cheap, and authors need not now erase one book before they write another. Instead of cultivating the earth for wheat andpotatoes, they cultivate literature, and fill a place in the Republic of Letters. Or they would fain write for fame merely, as others actually raise crops of grain to be distilled into brandy.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Book, Writing, Paper

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.68, Xist Publishing

• I cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts in; they are commonly ruled for dollars and cents.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Book, Writing, Dollars

• There are two classes of authors: the one write the history of their times, the other their biography.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Writing, Class, Two

  Henry David Thoreau, Jeffrey S. Cramer (2007). “I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau”, p.27, Yale University Press

• All men are really most attracted by the beauty of plain speech, and they even write in a florid style in imitation of this. Theyprefer to be misunderstood rather than to come short of its exuberance.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Beauty, Writing, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.516, Simon and Schuster

• Literary gentlemen, editors, and critics think that they know how to write, because they have studied grammar and rhetoric; but they are egregiously mistaken. The art of composition is as simple as the discharge of a bullet from a rifle, and its masterpieces imply an infinitely greater force behind them.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Art, Writing, Simple

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.389, Penguin

• When I hear the hypercritical quarreling about grammar and style, the position of the particles, etc., etc., stretching or contracting every speaker to certain rules of theirs. I see that they forget that the first requisite and rule is that expression shall be vital and natural, as much as the voice of a brute or an interjection: first of all, mother tongue; and last of all, artificial or father tongue. Essentially your truest poetic sentence is as free and lawless as a lamb's bleat.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Mother, Father, Writing

  Henry David Thoreau (2006). “Thoreau and the Art of Life: Precepts and Principles”, p.13, Heron Dance Press

• We are often struck by the force and precision of style to which hard-working men, unpracticed in writing, easily attain when required to make the effort. As if plainness and vigor and sincerity, the ornaments of style, were better learned on the farm and in the workshop than in the schools. The sentences written by such rude hands are nervous and tough, like hardened thongs, the sinews of the deer, or the roots of the pine.

  Henry David Thoreau

  School, Hard Work, Writing

  Henry David Thoreau (2000). “Walden and Other Writings: (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.385, Modern Library

• Letter-writing too often degenerates into a communicating of facts, and not of truths; of other men's deeds and not our thoughts.What are the convulsions of a planet, compared with the emotions of the soul? or the rising of a thousand suns, if that is not enlightened by a ray?

  Henry David Thoreau

  Communication, Writing, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “Thoreau's Book of Quotations”, p.56, Courier Corporation

• Steady labor with the hands, which engrosses the attention also, is unquestionably the best method of removing palaver and sentimentality out of one's style, both of speaking and writing.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Writing, Hands, Style

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.517, Simon and Schuster

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