Henry David Thoreau

To regret deeply is to live afresh.

Being is the great explainer.

You must not only aim right, but draw the bow with all your might.

If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.

The generative energy, which, when we are loose, dissipates and makes us unclean, when we are continent invigorates and inspires us. Chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which succeed it.

Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is a nest egg by the side of which more will be laid.

We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.

I don’t care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must lay it down and commence living on its hint… What I began by reading I must finish by acting.

Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.

An autobiography is not about pictures; it’s about the stories; it’s about honesty and as much truth as you can tell without coming too close to other people’s privacy.

Why not blame the libraries? They’re full of violent books.

Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.

The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.

Books are the best of things if well used; if abused, among the worst. They are good for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.

Just the omission of Jane Austen’s books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn’t a book in it.

To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any other exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object.

The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.

The last book I read was the book I’ve been rereading most of my life, The Fountainhead.

The multitude of books is making us ignorant.

Books are the mirrors of the soul.