Henry David Thoreau Quotations

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.

This world is but a canvas to our imagination.

Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.

Justice is sweet and musical; but injustice is harsh and discordant.

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

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.

There is no remedy for love but to love more.

Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify.

It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.

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.

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.

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 practise 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.

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.

Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.

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.

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.

To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.

Where there is an observatory and a telescope, we expect that any eyes will see new worlds at once.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.

Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.

Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve.

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.

As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society.

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.

Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.

We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success. What we do best or most perfectly is what we have most thoroughly learned by the longest practice, and at length it falls from us without our notice, as a leaf from a tree.

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.

Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams.

Is the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man.

How does it become a man to behave towards the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.

I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

What is once well done is done forever.

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.

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.

I have found that hollow, which even I had relied on for solid.

We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers.

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

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.

Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.

Men are born to succeed, not to fail.

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. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured and far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple tree or an oak.

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one.

Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.

May we so love as never to have occasion to repent of our love!

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.

Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.

The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth.

It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.

Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.

I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual.

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.

Alas! how little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape!

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.

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

I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.

There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature.

If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are translated?

True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.

I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.

Goodness is the only investment that never fails.

If misery loves company, misery has company enough.

The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness.

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end.

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.

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.

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.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

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.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all that was not life.

The bluebird carries the sky on his back.

It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.

Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them.

There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.

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.

While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.

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.

What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.

The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other breaks into pieces.

We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect.

We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bone.

None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.

What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?

It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious.

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.

Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them.

They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar.

I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another.

There are old heads in the world who cannot help me by their example or advice to live worthily and satisfactorily to myself; but I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life.

I was more independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment.