Henry David Thoreau Quotes

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.

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

All good things are cheap: all bad are very dear.

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

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

The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.

There is no remedy for love but to love more.

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.

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.

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

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

Things do not change; we change.

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

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

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

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

be yourself- not your idea of what you think somebody else's idea of yourself should be.

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.

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.

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

Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?

This world is but a canvas to our imagination.

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

It is never too late to give up our prejudices.

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.

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

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

I love Nature partly because she is not man, but a retreat from him. None of his institutions control or pervade her. There a different kind of right prevails. In her midst I can be glad with an entire gladness. If this world were all man, I could not stretch myself, I should lose all hope. He is constraint, she is freedom to me. He makes me wish for another world. She makes me content with this.

Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.

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.

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

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

I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.

The universe is wider than our views of it.

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.

Men have become the tools of their tools.

Men are born to succeed, not to fail.

Public opinion is a weak tyrant, compared with our private opinion—what a man thinks of himself, that is which determines, or rather indicates his fate.

In wildness is the preservation of the world.

What sort of philosophers are we, who know absolutely nothing of the origin and destiny of cats?

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.

I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.

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

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.

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.

What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.

That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest.

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

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.

Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.

The heart is forever inexperienced.

In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.

Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are.

Beware of all enterprises that require a new set of clothes.

All change is a miracle to contemplate, but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.

In the long run you only hit what you aim at. Therefore, though you should fail immediately, you had better aim at something high.

It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear.

I do not know how to distinguish between waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.

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

Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed... Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.

He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise.

I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.

Love must be as much a light as it is a flame.

A gun will give you the body, not the bird

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

In the long run, we only hit what we aim at.

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

The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.

We should come home from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day with new experience and character.

Goodness is the only investment that never fails.

Man is the artificer of his own happiness.

The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. I have no wealth to bestow on him. If he knows that I am happy in loving him, he will want no other reward. Is not friendship divine in this?

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.

Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.

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.

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.

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 an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dullness.

Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout.

To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.

None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty.

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

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.

I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.

There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers

Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights.

He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate.

Thus men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up.

I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.

A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure.

Be not simply good - be good for something.

If the day and night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal - that is your success.

A sentence should be read as if its author, had he held a plough instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end.

In what concerns you much, do not think that you have companions: know that you are alone in the world.

Every man is the builder of a temple called his body.

It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.

Water is the only drink for a wise man.

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

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 think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

Knowledge does not come to us in details, but in flashes of light from heaven.

What a man thinks of himself that is what determines, or rather indicates his fate.

I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man.

Great men, unknown to their generation, have their fame among the great who have preceded them, and all true worldly fame subsides from their high estimate beyond the stars.

Even the best things are not equal to their fame.

If one doubts whether Grecian valor and patriotism are not a fiction of the poets, he may go to Athens and see still upon the walls of the temple of Minerva the circular marks made by the shields taken from the enemy in the Persian war, which were suspended there. We have not far to seek for living and unquestionable evidence. The very dust takes shape and confirms some story which we had read.

Do not lose hold of your dreams or aspirations. For if you do, you may still exist but you have ceased to live.

Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw.

The faultfinder will find faults even in paradise.

There is no rule more invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspect.

This life is not for complaint, but for satisfaction.

Men are probably nearer the essential truth in their superstitions than in their science.

It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive.

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

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are the richest.

Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.

I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.

Must be out-of-doors enough to get experience of wholesome reality, as a ballast to thought and sentiment. Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life.

None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.

What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.

When it's time to die, let us not discover that we have never lived.

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.

The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.

The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure.

Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping.

Music is perpetual, and only the hearing is intermittent.

The universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to discuss the characters of individuals.

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

Truths and roses have thorns about them.

The eye is the jewel of the body.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

Whatever we leave to God, God does and blesses us.

When a dog runs at you, whistle for him.

Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.

The law will never make a man free; it is men who have got to make the law free.

All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy.

Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.

When I would re-create myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most interminable and to the citizen, most dismal, swamp. I enter as a sacred place, a Sanctum sanctorum. There is the strength, the marrow, of Nature.

Behave so the aroma of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere.

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.

It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.

I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beechtree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines.

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

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

To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning.

Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently appreciated by mankind.

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

A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.

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

One may discover a new side to his most intimate friend when for the first time he hears him speak in public. He will be stranger to him as he is more familiar to the audience. The longest intimacy could not foretell how he would behave then

City life is millions of people being lonesome together.

We are double-edged blades, and every time we whet our virtue the return stroke strops our vice.

We must have infinite faith in each other. If we have not, we must never let it leak out that we have not.

I have received no more than one or two letters in my life that were worth the postage.

If the fairest features of the landscape are to be named after men, let them be the noblest and worthiest men alone.

Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual friends, that we might go and meet their ideal cousins.

Associate reverently, and as much as you can, with your loftiest thoughts.

The bluebird carries the sky on his back.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

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.

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

The way by which you may get money almost without exception leads downward.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined.

Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.

Experience is in the fingers and head. The heart is inexperienced.

My friend is one... who take me for what I am.

I would give all the wealth of the world, and all the deeds of all the heroes, for one true vision.

The highest law gives a thing to him who can use it.

That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another s. We see so much only as we possess.