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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
- All good things are wild, and free. – Henry David Thoreau
- The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it. – Henry David Thoreau
- The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. – Henry David Thoreau
- This world is but a canvas to our imagination. – Henry David Thoreau
- Our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify. – Henry David Thoreau
- Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. – Henry David Thoreau
In wildness is the preservation of the world. – Henry David Thoreau
To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. – Henry David Thoreau
Dreams are the touchstones of our characters. – Henry David Thoreau
Not until we are lost do, we begin to understand ourselves. – Henry David Thoreau
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined. – Henry David Thoreau
It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see. – Henry David Thoreau
Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something. – Henry David Thoreau
The universe is wider than our views of it. – Henry David Thoreau
How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. – Henry David Thoreau
Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it. – Henry David Thoreau
The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought and attended to my answer. – Henry David Thoreau
It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature. – Henry David Thoreau
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. – Henry David Thoreau
Goodness is the only investment that never fails. – Henry David Thoreau
Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this. – Henry David Thoreau
The question is not what you look at, but what you see. – Henry David Thoreau
Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth. – Henry David Thoreau
Surely joy is the condition of life. – Henry David Thoreau
Not all who wander are lost. – Henry David Thoreau
Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you. But if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder. – Henry David Thoreau
Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes. – Henry David Thoreau
It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things. – Henry David Thoreau
Things do not change; we change. – Henry David Thoreau
Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it. – Henry David Thoreau
I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion. – Henry David Thoreau
Only that traveling is good which reveals to me the value of home and enables me to enjoy it better. – Henry David Thoreau
The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. – Henry David Thoreau
Wealth is the ability to fully experience life. – Henry David Thoreau
Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves. – Henry David Thoreau
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. – Henry David Thoreau
What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us. – Henry David Thoreau
Never look back unless you are planning to go that way. – Henry David Thoreau
I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of a man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor. – Henry David Thoreau
Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around. – Henry David Thoreau
What is once well done is done forever. – Henry David Thoreau
Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. – Henry David Thoreau
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. – Henry David Thoreau
Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. – Henry David Thoreau
Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. – Henry David Thoreau
Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake. – Henry David Thoreau
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads. – Henry David Thoreau
If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment. – Henry David Thoreau
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it. – Henry David Thoreau
Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth. – Henry David Thoreau
Be yourself, not your idea of what you think somebody else’s idea of yourself should be. – Henry David Thoreau
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone. – Henry David Thoreau
All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be. – Henry David Thoreau
It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about? – Henry David Thoreau
What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on? – Henry David Thoreau
What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.
When it comes time to die, let us not discover that we have never lived. – Henry David Thoreau
It is never too late to give up our prejudices. – Henry David Thoreau
The heart is forever inexperienced. – Henry David Thoreau
It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know. – Henry David Thoreau
Life isn’t about finding yourself; it’s about creating yourself. So, live the life you imagined. – Henry David Thoreau
Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul. – Henry David Thoreau
Men are born to succeed, not to fail. – Henry David Thoreau
I make myself rich by making my wants few. – Henry David Thoreau
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. – Henry David Thoreau
As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives. – Henry David Thoreau
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. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms. – Henry David Thoreau
You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this. – Henry David Thoreau
If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. As if a town had no interest in its forests but to cut them down! – Henry David Thoreau
We need the tonic of wildness…At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature. – Henry David Thoreau
There is no remedy for love, but to love more. – Henry David Thoreau
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away. – Henry David Thoreau
For an impenetrable shield, stand inside yourself. – Henry David Thoreau
Every man is the builder of a temple called his body. – Henry David Thoreau
To be awake is to be alive. – Henry David Thoreau
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity. – Henry David Thoreau
Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant? – Henry David Thoreau
When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest. – Henry David Thoreau
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all. – Henry David Thoreau
I was not designed to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. – Henry David Thoreau
Not till we are completely lost or turned around… do we begin to find ourselves. – Henry David Thoreau
The language of Friendship is not words, but meanings. – Henry David Thoreau
As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness. – Henry David Thoreau
Every generation laughs at the old fashions but follows religiously the new. – Henry David Thoreau
An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day. – Henry David Thoreau
What’s the use of a fine house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on? – Henry David Thoreau
Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star. – Henry David Thoreau
It’s not worth our while to let our imperfections disturb us always. – Henry David Thoreau
The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. – Henry David Thoreau
Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe. – Henry David Thoreau
I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. – Henry David Thoreau
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book. – Henry David Thoreau
I can alter my life by altering my attitude. He who would have nothing to do with thorns must never attempt to gather flowers. – Henry David Thoreau
Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience. – Henry David Thoreau
Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence. – Henry David Thoreau
If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will believe what they see. Let them see. – Henry David Thoreau
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root. – Henry David Thoreau
Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail. – Henry David Thoreau
Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations. – Henry David Thoreau
Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary. – Henry David Thoreau
I have an immense appetite for solitude, like an infant for sleep, and if I don’t get enough for this year, I shall cry all the next. – Henry David Thoreau
Friends… they cherish one another’s hopes. They are kind to one another’s dreams. – Henry David Thoreau
You cannot dream yourself into a character: you must hammer and forge yourself into one. – Henry David Thoreau
I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. – Henry David Thoreau
The path of least resistance leads to crooked rivers and crooked men. – Henry David Thoreau
Amid a world of noisy, shallow actors it is noble to stand aside and say, ‘I will simply be. – Henry David Thoreau
Men have become the tools of their tools. – Henry David Thoreau
Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. what a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate. – Henry David Thoreau
We are born as innocents. We are polluted by advice. – Henry David Thoreau
Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself. – Henry David Thoreau
I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals. – Henry David Thoreau
To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity and trust. – Henry David Thoreau
What sort of philosophers are we, who know absolutely nothing of the origin and destiny of cats? – Henry David Thoreau
I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. – Henry David Thoreau
Wildness is the preservation of the World. – Henry David Thoreau
We are constantly invited to be who we are. – Henry David Thoreau
What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook. – Henry David Thoreau
When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. – Henry David Thoreau
That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest. – Henry David Thoreau
It is better to have your head in the clouds and know where you are… than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them and think that you are in paradise. – Henry David Thoreau
Renew thyself completely each day. – Henry David Thoreau
A lake is a landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature. – Henry David Thoreau
Do not lose hold of your dreams or aspirations. For if you do, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live. – Henry David Thoreau
Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written. – Henry David Thoreau
I have a room all to myself; it is nature. – Henry David Thoreau
If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so, a man. – Henry David Thoreau
In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is a misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood. – Henry David Thoreau
I have, as it were, my own sun and moon and stars, and a little world all to myself. – Henry David Thoreau
If I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. what demon possessed me that i behaved so well? – Henry David Thoreau
To be awake is to be completely alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. – Henry David Thoreau
