"A truly good book is something as..." - Quote by Henry David Thoreau

“The same soil is good for men and for trees. A man's health requires as many acres of meadow to his prospect as his farm does loads of muck.”

“If ever I did a man any goodof course it was something exceptional and insignificant compared with the good or evil which I am constantly doing by being what I am.”

“As for Doing-good, that is one of the professions which are full.”

“I am no indiscriminate novel reader. The mere trash of the common circulating library I hold in the highest contempt.”

“I'm always writing new books so I don't dwell on the ones I've already done. I think that's a habit from being a newspaper guy because you're always writing columns and you can't reflect on the ones you've already done.”

“Most of the classical citations you shall hear or read in the current journals or speeches were not drawn from the originals, but from previous quotations in English books.”

“I loved [fairy stories] so, and my mother weighed down by grief had given up telling me them. At Nohant I found Mmes. d'Ardony's and Perrault's tales in old editions which became my chief joy for five or six years ... I've never read them since, but I could tell each tale straight through, and I don't think anything in all one's intellecutal life can be compared to these delights of imagination.”

“When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.”

“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”