Henry David Thoreau Quotes about Home

The most domestic cat, which has lain on a rug all her days, appears quite at home in the woods, and, by her sly and stealthy behavior, proves herself more native there than the regular inhabitants.

The most domestic cat, which has lain on a rug all her days, appears quite at home in the woods, and, by her sly and stealthy behavior, proves herself more native there than the regular inhabitants.

Henry David Thoreau

Home, Cat, Woods

Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.141, Graphic Arts Books

What a fool he must be who thinks that his El Dorado is anywhere but where he lives.

Henry David Thoreau

Home, Thinking, Fool

Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Familiar Letters (Annotated Edition)”, p.266, Jazzybee Verlag

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 had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

Henry David Thoreau

Friendship, Home, Two

Walden ch. 6 (1854)

I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home.

Henry David Thoreau

Nature, Home, Solitary

Henry David Thoreau (2012). “Thoreau's Book of Quotations”, p.114, Courier Corporation

Direct your eye inward, and you'll find / A thousand regions in your mind / Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be / Expert in home-cosmography

Henry David Thoreau

Home, Eye, Mind

Henry David Thoreau (2016). “Walden”, p.227, Xist Publishing

Rise free from care before the dawn and seek adventure. Let the noon find you by other lakes, and the night overtake thee everywhere at home. There are no larger fields than these, no worthier games than may here be played.

Henry David Thoreau

Inspiring, Home, Adventure

Henry David Thoreau (2016). “Walden”, p.149, Xist Publishing

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

But the place which you have selected for your camp, though never so rough and grim, begins at once to have its attractions, and becomes a very centre of civilization to you: "Home is home, be it never so homely."

Henry David Thoreau

Home, Civilization, Camping

Henry David Thoreau (1873). “The Maine Woods”, p.290

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.

I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home. I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful.

Henry David Thoreau

Happiness, Beautiful, Home

Henry David Thoreau (2012). “Selections from the Journals”, p.34, Courier Corporation

Far travel, very far travel, or travail, comes near to the worth of staying at home.

Henry David Thoreau

Travel, Home, Staying

Allen Clapp Thomas, American Antiquarian Society, Andrew McFarland Davis, Austin Samuel Garver, Edward Everett Hale (1904). “Mary Griffin and Her Creed”

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

Man wanted a home, a place for warmth, or comfort, first of physical warmth, then the warmth of the affections.

Henry David Thoreau

Home, Men, Comfort

Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.168, Penguin

I have learned that even the smallest house can be a home.

Henry David Thoreau

Home, House, I Have Learned

Drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your work with satisfaction - a work at which you would not be ashamed to invoke the muse.

Henry David Thoreau

Work, Home, Night

Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.191, Simon and Schuster

I did not go to Boston, for with regard to that place I sympathize with one of my neighbors, an old man, who has not been there since the last war, when he was compelled to go. No, I have a real genius for staying at home.

Henry David Thoreau

Real, War, Home

Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Familiar Letters (Annotated Edition)”, p.194, Jazzybee Verlag

You must ascend a mountain to learn your relation to matter, and so to your own body, for it is at home there, though you are not.

Henry David Thoreau

Home, Mountain, Body

Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.375, Penguin

It is after we get home that we really go over the mountain, if ever.

Henry David Thoreau

Home, Experience, Mountain

Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1865). “Letters to Various Persons”, p.165

No: until I want the protection of Massachusetts to be extended to me in some distant Southern port, where my liberty is endangered, or until I am bent solely on building up an estate at home by peaceful enterprise, I can afford to refuse allegiance to Massachusetts, and her right to my property and life. It costs me less in every sense to incur the penalty of disobedience to the State than it would to obey. I should feel as if I were worth less in that case.

Henry David Thoreau

Home, Government, Building Up

Henry David Thoreau (1992). “The Essays of Henry David Thoreau”, p.26, Rowman & Littlefield

I suspect that, if you should go to the end of the world, you would find somebody there going farther, as if just starting for home at sundown, and having a last word before he drove off.

Henry David Thoreau

Travel, Home, World

Henry David Thoreau (1864). “The Maine Woods”, p.11

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

Only the traveling is good which reveals to me the value of home and enables me to enjoy it better.

Henry David Thoreau

Travel, Home, Tourism

Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.156, Courier Corporation

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

Henry David Thoreau Quotes about Home

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