Henry David Thoreau Language Quotations

The dinner even is only the parable of a dinner, commonly.

It would seem as if the very language of our parlors would lose all its nerve and degenerate into palaver wholly, our lives pass at such remoteness from its symbols, and its metaphors and tropes are necessarily so far fetched.

How shall we account for our pursuits, if they are original? We get the language with which to describe our various lives out of acommon mint.

Where shall we look for standard English, but to the words of a standard man?

We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the filed, but not to describe human character.

The language of friendship is not words, but meanings. It is an intelligence about language.

It is worth the expense of youthful days and costly hours, if you learn only some words of an ancient language, which are raised out of the trivialness of the street, to be perpetual suggestions and provocations. It is not in vain that the farmer remembers and repeats the few Latin words which he has heard.