Quotes from Henry David Thoreau's books, and about them
Walden on Iliad: “In those days, when my hands were much employed, I read but little, but the least scraps of paper which lay on the ground, my holder, or tablecloth, afforded me as much entertainment, in fact answered the same purpose as the Iliad.”
Walden on De Re Rustica: “Old Cato, whose "De Re Rusticâ" is my "Cultivator," says--and the only translation I have seen makes sheer nonsense of the passage--"When you think of getting a farm turn it thus in your mind, not to buy greedily; nor spare your pains to look at it, and do not think it enough to go round it once.”
Walden on Gulistan: “I read in the Gulistan, or Flower Garden, of Sheik Sadi of Shiraz, that "they asked a wise man, saying: Of the many celebrated trees which the Most High God has created lofty and umbrageous, they call none azad, or free, excepting the cypress, which bears no fruit; what mystery is there in this?”
Walden on Wonder-Working Providence: “Old Johnson, in his "Wonder-Working Providence," speaking of the first settlers of this town, with whom he was contemporary, tells us that "they burrow themselves in the earth for their first shelter under some hillside, and, casting the soil aloft upon timber, they make a smoky fire against the…”
Walden on Dialogues: “His Dialogues, which contain what was immortal in him, lie on the next shelf, and yet I never read them.”
Walden on My Prisons: “This is the whole history of "My Prisons."”
Walden on Memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini: “Benvenuto Cellini tells us in his memoirs, that, after a certain terrible dream or vision which he had during his confinement in the castle of St. Angelo”
Walden on Cinderella: “…unwearied gizzard, whose corrugations even yet need no sharpening, just as some little four-year-old bencher his two-cent gilt-covered edition of Cinderella--without any improvement, that I can see, in the pronunciation, or accent, or emphasis, or any more skill in extracting or inserting the…”