"How many a man has dated a..." - Quote by Henry David Thoreau

“Nations! What are nations? Tartars! and Huns! and Chinamen! Like insects they swarm. The historian strives in vain to make them memorable. It is for want of a man that there are so many men. It is individuals that populate the world.”

“Continued traveling is far from productive. It begins with wearing away the soles of the shoes, and making the feet sore, and erelong it will wear a man clean up, after making his heart sore into the bargain. I have observed that the afterlife of those who have traveled much is very pathetic.”

“To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating.”

“People cannot become truly knowledgeable without being excellent readers.”

“Some of the sweetest hours in life, in retrospect will be found to have been spent with books.”

“I was so long writing my review that I never got around to reading the book.”

“Nothing shakes my opinion of a book. Nothing -- nothing. Only perhaps if it's the book of a young person -- or of a friend -- no, even so, I think myself infallible.”

“In 'Huckleberry Finn,' I have drawn Tom Blankenship exactly as he was. He was ignorant, unwashed, insufficiently fed; but he had as good a heart as ever any boy had.”

“From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books. Pleased with the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' my first collection was of John Bunyan's works in separate little volumes.”