Excursions

“Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.””

— Henry David Thoreau

“The language of Friendship is not words, but meanings.””

— Henry David Thoreau

“This world is but canvas to our imaginations.””

— Henry David Thoreau

“I was once reproved by a minister who was driving a poor beast to some meeting-house horse-sheds among the hills of New Hampshire, because I was bending my steps to a mountain-top on the Sabbath, instead of a church, when I would have gone farther than he to hear a true word spoken on that or any day. He declared that I was 'breaking the Lord's fourth commandment,' and proceeded to enumerate, in a sepulchral tone, the disasters which had befallen him whenever he had done any ordinary work on the Sabbath. He really thought that a god was on the watch to trip up those men who followed any secular work on this day, and did not see that it was the evil conscience of the workers that did it. . There are few things more disheartening and disgusting than when you are walking the streets of a strange village on the Sabbath, to hear a preacher shouting like a boatswain in a gale of wind, and thus harshly profaning the quiet atmosphere of the day.””

— Henry David Thoreau

“Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams.””

— Henry David Thoreau

“In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood””

— Henry David Thoreau

“Enthusiasm is a supernatural serenity.””

— Henry David Thoreau

“There is in my nature, methinks, a singular yearning toward all wildness.””

— Henry David Thoreau

“In dreams we see ourselves naked and acting out our real characters, even more clearly than we see others awake. But an unwavering and commanding virtue would compel even its most fantastic and faintest dreams to respect its ever wakeful authority; as we are accustomed to say carelessly, we should never have dreamed of such a thing. Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.””

— Henry David Thoreau