Henry David Thoreau Fishing Quotations

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

Many men go fishing their entire lives without knowing it is not fish they are after.

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing it is not fish they are after.

Time is but the stream I go fishing in. I drink at it, but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. It's thin current slides away, but eternity remains.

Instead of the scream of a fish hawk scaring the fishes, is heard the whistle of the steam-engine, arousing a country to its progress.

The fishermen say that the "thundering of the pond" scares the fishes and prevents their biting.

The sport of digging the bait is nearly equal to that of catching the fish, when one's appetite is not too keen.

Man needs to know but little more than a lobster in order to catch him in his traps.

It is good even to be a fisherman in summer and in winter.

I thought, as I have my living to get, and have not eaten today, that I might go a- fishing. That's the true industry for poets. It is the only trade I have learned.

We waded so gently and reverently, or we pulled together so smoothly, that the fishes of thought were not scared from the stream, nor feared any angler on the bank, but came and went grandly, like the clouds which came and went on the western sky, and the mother-o'-pearl flocks which sometimes form and dissolve there.

Such a man has some right to fish, and I love to see nature carried out in him.

Who hears the fishes when they cry?

In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment and will never be more divine in the lapse of the ages. Time is but a stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it, but when I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away but eternity remains.

The perch swallows the grub-worm, the pickerel swallows the perch, and the fisherman swallows the pickerel; and so all the chinks in the scale of being are filled.

Fishing has been styled 'a contemplative man's recreation,' ... and science is only a more contemplative man's recreation.

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.

The inhabitants of the Cape generally do not complain of their "soil," but will tell you that it is good enough for them to dry their fish on.

If rightly made, a boat would be a sort of amphibious animal, a creature of two elements, related by one half its structure to some swift and shapely fish, and by the other to some strong-winged and graceful bird.

The natural historian is not a fisherman who prays for cloudy days and good luck merely; but as fishing has been styled "a contemplative man's recreation," introducing him profitably to woods and water, so the fruit of the naturalist's observations is not in new genera or species, but in new contemplations still, and science is only a more contemplative man's recreation.

The greatest tragedy in life is to spend your whole life fishing only to discover it was never fish that you were after.