Henry David Thoreau > Quotes

“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, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“One must maintain a little bittle of summer, even in the middle of winter.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden, or Life in the Woods

“What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.”
― 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 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.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

“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

“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

“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience and Other Essays: Collected Essays of Henry David Thoreau

“Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden and Other Writings

“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“...be yourself- not your idea of what you think somebody else's idea of yourself should be.”
― 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, Walden, or Life in the Woods

“Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.”
― Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

“The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“There is no remedy for love, but to love more.”
― 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

“Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.”
― 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

“Not till we are completely lost or turned around... do we begin to find ourselves.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Men profess to be lovers of music, but for the most part they give no evidence in their opinions and lives that they have heard it.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“A bore is someone who takes away my solitude and doesn't give me companionship in return.”
― 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

“Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“All good things are wild and free.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“I am a happy camper so I guess I’m doing something right. 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

“Things do not change; we change.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us even in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavour. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal and then leap in the dark to our success.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“As if you could kill time without injuring eternity”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”
― 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, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

“Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“However mean your life is, meet it and live it.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“the language of friendship is not words but meanings.”
― Henry David Thoreau

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

“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, Walden

“Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“One is not born into the world to do everything but to do something.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“This world is but a canvas for our imagination.”
― Henry David Thoreau

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

“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

“I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden