In books, that which is most generally interesting is what comes home to the most cherished private experience of the greatest number. It is not the book of him who has travelled the farthest over the surface of the globe, but of him who has lived the deepest and been the most at home. Henry David Thoreau
About This Quote

This quote reminds us that the best and most interesting books and stories are those that we read and experience first-hand. To write about something we have not experienced for ourselves is to take a step backward, and the world will always see the author as a stranger. We all need to embrace our uniqueness and learn to be comfortable as we are, as opposed to trying to be someone else.

Source: The Quotable Thoreau

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More Quotes By Henry David Thoreau
  1. The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed...
  2. I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours..
  3. The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.
  4. It is not worth the while to let our imperfections disturb us always.
  5. I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
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