Henry David Thoreau Quotes
Writer and Philosopher
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.
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
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.
Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.
What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.
Be not simply good - be good for something.
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
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 which he hears, however measured or far away.
Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.
An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.
There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.
Things do not change; we change.
This world is but a canvas to our imagination.
Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.
Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?
I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.
The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.
Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.
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.
There is no remedy for love but to love more.
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
The language of friendship is not words but meanings.
I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.
Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.
Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify.
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.
Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.
Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.
Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.
The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.
It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?
Goodness is the only investment that never fails.
I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.
Not only must we be good, but we must also be good for something.
Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.
Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams.
The heart is forever inexperienced.
Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.
How does it become a man to behave towards the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.
Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.
Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.
If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.
What is once well done is done forever.
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.
Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual.
There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature.
The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.
It is what a man thinks of himself that really determines his fate.
It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear.
The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.
True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.
Men have become the tools of their tools.
It is never too late to give up our prejudices.
You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.
None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
Dreams are the touchstones of our character.
If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.
What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.
To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.
What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?
We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.
The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness.
Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.
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.
We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.
Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.
That government is best which governs least.
Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.
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.
We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.
Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.
Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.
Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.
There is one consolation in being sick; and that is the possibility that you may recover to a better state than you were ever in before.
In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.
Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.
Only that day dawns to which we are awake.
Live the life you've dreamed.
Truths and roses have thorns about them.
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 days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.
The bluebird carries the sky on his back.
Men are born to succeed, not to fail.
In wildness is the preservation of the world.
Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.
That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest.
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.
I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.
I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.
To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.
It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.