The Writings of Henry David Thoreau Quotes

“The commonest and cheapest sounds, as the barking of a dog, produce the same effect on fresh and healthy ears that the rarest music does. It depends on your appetite for sound. Just as a crust is sweeter to a healthy appetite than confectionery to a pampered or diseased one. It is better that these cheap sounds be music to us than that we have the rarest ears for music in any other sense. I have lain awake at night many a time to think of the barking of a dog which I had heard long before, bathing my being again in those waves of sound, as a frequenter of the opera might lie awake remembering the music he had heard.”
― Henry David Thoreau, The Writings of Henry David Thoreau

“We get the language with which to describe our various lives out of a common mint." (Letter, April 26, 1857, to B.B. Wiley)”
― Henry David Thoreau, The Writings of Henry David Thoreau