Top 1200 David Thoreau Quotes & Sayings

The other thing that happened in 1883 was my reading of Thoreau's Walden.

[David Lean's] images stay with me forever. But what makes them memorable isn't necessarily their beauty. That's just good photography. It's the emotion behind those images that's meant the most to me over the years. It's the way David Lean can put feeling on film. The way he shows a whole landscape of the spirit. For me, that's the real geography of David Lean country. And that's why, in a David Lean movie, there's no such thing as an empty landscape.

What I treasure most at any moment is intimacy, surprise, a sense of mystery, wit, depth and love. A handful of cherished friends offer me this, and the occasional singer or film-maker or artist. But my most reliable sources of electricity are Henry David Thoreau, Shakespeare, Melville and Emily Dickinson.

I like how you can go back and watch David Lean and John Ford and see the influence that had on Steven Spielberg, especially David Lean, in the camerawork, and yet, you don't watch any Spielberg movie and think of David Lean. Once you're looking for it, you see it all, but it's not in your face.

The power of reading a great book is that you start thinking like the author. For those magical moments while you are immersed in the forests of Arden, you are William Shakespeare; while you are shipwrecked on Treasure Island, you are Robert Louis Stevenson; while you are communing with nature at Walden, you are Henry David Thoreau. You start to think like they think, feel like they feel, and use imagination as they would. Their references become your own, and you carry these with you long after you've turned the last page.

There are instances: [Henry David] Thoreau read [John] Wordsworth, [John] Muir read Thoreau, Teddy Roosevelt read Muir, and you got national parks. It took a century for this to happen, for artistic values to percolate down to where honoring the relation of people's imagination to the land, or beauty, or to wild things, was issued in legislation.

The real America that Whitman proclaimed and Thoreau decoded.

I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau. As a result of his writings and personal witness, we are the heirs of a legacy of creative protest.

[David Harker asked: Dr Pauling, how do you have so many good ideas?] Well David, I have a lot of ideas and throw away the bad ones.

David Tua was an elite and world class heavyweight, I believe David Tua would have knocked Joseph Parker out in a handful of rounds.

The sun glistened on a drop of water as it fell from his hand to his knee. David wiped it off, but it left no tidemark: there was no more dirt to rub away. He took a deep breath and shivered. He was David. Everything else was washed away, the camp, its smell, its touch--and now he was David, his own master, free--free as long as he could remain so.

If Snowden really claims that his actions amounted to genuine civil disobedience, he should go to some English language bookstore in Moscow and get a copy of Henry David Thoreau's 'Civil Disobedience'.

I met Tom Baker doing a voice-over when David [Arabella's friend, David Tennant] wasn't at all well known. We were doing this voice-over together and I said to Tom, 'Oh, my friend's a really, really big Doctor Who fan,' and he replied, 'Wait!' He got his cheque book out and asked, 'What his name?' I said 'David Tennant'. He wrote, 'To David Tennant, seventeen pounds forty five', signed it and I asked him what it meant. He said, 'He'll know'

I have lived to prove Thoreau's contention that a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.

As a schoolboy, I loved Charles Dickens. His 'David Copperfield' has had the strongest influence on me - I looked up to David Copperfield as a role model.

If we trace origins of anarchism in the United States, then probably Henry David Thoreau is the closest you can come to an early American anarchist. You do not really encounter anarchism until after the Civil War, when you have European anarchists, especially German anarchists, coming to the United States. They actually begin to organize. The first time that anarchism has an organized force and becomes publicly known in the United States is in Chicago at the time of Haymarket Affair.

I like David Cameron. He has had a couple of rough statements, but that's okay, I think David Cameron's a good man.

I like art that's simple but feels kind of genius - like David Shrigley or David Hockney.

I felt him there with me. The real David. My David. David, you are still here. Alive. Alive in me.Alive in the galaxy.Alive in the stars.Alive in the sky.Alive in the sea.Alive in the palm trees.Alive in feathers.Alive in birds.Alive in the mountains.Alive in the coyotes.Alive in books.Alive in sound.Alive in mom.Alive in dad.Alive in Bobby.Alive in me.Alive in soil.Alive in branches.Alive in fossils.Alive in tongues.Alive in eyes.Alive in cries.Alive in bodies.Alive in past, present and future. Alive forever.

What's David's role? David looks good, that's what David does. David looks good, and I'm the funny one, that's what I hear constantly. But I keep telling him that looks fade.

For me, David Beckham will always be a legend... everything David represents for soccer, as an example to children, is reserved for very few people.

David impresses by his example on the field. He never stops running, he plays with supreme confidence, he always tries his hardest and he scores important goals. (on David Beckham)

When [Ralph Waldo] Emerson visited Thoreau in jail and asked, 'What are you doing in there?' it was reported that Thoreau replied, 'What are you doing out there?'

Civil disobedience has almost always been about expression. Generally, it's nonviolent, as defined by Henry David Thoreau, Gandhi, and King.

I have so many favorite writers, it's very hard to select a few... of classic writers, I have always admired Emily Dickinson and Henry David Thoreau.

I like the story about Henry David Thoreau, who, when he was on his death bed, his family sent for a minister. The minister said, 'Henry, have you made your peace with God?' Thoreau said, 'I didn't know we'd quarreled.'

Live deep instead of fast. I think this is what Thoreau meant.

Henry David Thoreau is very independent-minded, very iconoclastic, and had quite a corrosive sense of humor. I think that I probably have grown up to have a Thoreauvian perspective on many things. Though in other ways I live a life he would not have approved of. He believed to simplify, simplify, simplify. Make your life very clear and plain and meditative and not confused. Sometimes my life, in fact, is confused.

If you took a couple of David Bowies and stuck one of the David Bowies on the top of the other David Bowie, then attached another David Bowie to the end of each of the arms of the upper of the first two David Bowies and wrapped the whole business up in a dirty beach robe you would then have something which didn't exactly look like John Watson, but which those who knew him would find hauntingly familiar.

As a songwriter, I was influenced by David Bowie - a great writer. A class above everybody in so many ways. Lennon and McCartney, of course. Class stuff. David Cousins was my favorite lyricist.

David and Dad didn't get along too well growing up. I mean we all got along, but it was harder on David, because David wasn't going to be the son that Dad wanted. But now they're like best friends.

I created a vision of David in my mind and simply carved away everything that was not David.

Being Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm was the best thing to happen to Larry David in life.

Yes, there was a massive difference between their styles. David is a very technical director and Chris is an actor's director, in the sense of emotion. With David, he's done horror films, so Eclipse is much darker, whereas I found New Moon really light and poetic. I didn't have as much interaction with David because the casting process was already done.

As I always said: I fell in with David Jones. I did not fall in love with David Bowie.

Following the teaching of Gandhi and Thoreau, Dr. King, it set me on a path. And I never looked back.

When they asked Michelangelo how he made his statue of David he is reported to have said, "It is easy. You just chip away the stone that doesn't look like David.

When you're reading Thoreau you look at Hollywood differently, let me tell ya!

I've been obsessed with David Letterman forever, and I'd love to be the drag version of David Letterman.

Asked whether or not he believed in an afterlife, Thoreau quipped, "One world at a time."

It's hard for the modern generation to understand Thoreau, who lived beside a pond but didn't own water skis or a snorkel.

David Burnett was the son of Martha Foley, who edited the Best American Short Stories series. She hired me to work with David and her to read stories for the anthology.

One of the strongest of contemporary conventions is that of comparing to Thoreau every writer who has been as far out of the house as the mailbox.

If there is innocence on Earth again, I tend to imagine it in more [Henry David]Thoreau sort of terms.

As a writer, you have to be near people and hear stuff. I'm a hamburger and cheese kind of fellow; I'm not Henry David Thoreau.

Parents often give middle names just so that later, when they're yelling at the kid, they can drag it out. Henry David Thoreau, you come in here this instant!

David is the show. There are other writers, but it's David's vision.

David Bowie used to cover loads of people, and there was an element of "David Bowie did it, so we wanted to do it," because we're kind of obsessed [with him].

Circumstantial evidence is occasionally very convincing, as when you find a trout in the milk, to quote Thoreau's example.

Henry David Thoreau, who never earned much of a living or sustained a relationship with any woman that wasn't brotherly -- who lived mostly under his parents' roof . . . who advocated one day's work and six days "off" as the weekly round and was considered a bit of a fool in his hometown . . . is probably the American writer who tells us best how to live comfortably with our most constant companion, ourselves.

And after reading Thoreau I felt how much I have lost by leaving nature out of my life.

The next week she withheld my paycheck until I signed a document (drafted by David) in which I promised not to marry Connor. Ever. I signed the document, took the check, and had David draft another document forbidding all Spellmans to practice any form of blackmail. David tried to explain to me that a contract in which you promise not to break the law is ultimately redundant, but I didn't care.

If there was anybody I could meet that I have not met, I would say David. David from the Bible. He was a mighty man of God, and he was a warrior, and he was a worshipper.

Literally, my last call was with David Blaine, congratulating him on his show. I have a camaraderie with David.

David Shire and I have been happily married for 21 years! We have a 12-year-old son. David is a genius. He writes the most magnificent music and he is a devoted and loving husband and father. I am so blessed!

I like the story about Henry David Thoreau, who, when he was on his death bed, his family sent for a minister. The minister said, 'Henry, have you made your peace with God?' Thoreau said, 'I didn't know we'd quarreled.

In 1848, Thoreau went to jail for refusing, as a protest against the Mexican war, to pay his poll tax. When RW Emerson came to bail him out, Emerson said, 'Henry, what are you doing in there?' Thoreau quietly replied, 'Ralph, what are you doing out there?'

I remember giving birth in Bromley Hospital annexe. It was painful. Zowie was 8 lb. 8 oz. David was there the whole time. It was the first and only time I saw David cry.

I'm no Thoreau.

God doesn't need a lot to do a lot. All David had was five stones. And all David used was one.