Selected Quotes by 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, Life
"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, Kindness
"I have, as it were, my own sun and moon and stars, and a little world all to myself."
Henry David Thoreau, Happiness
"In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood."
Henry David Thoreau, Society
"I make myself rich by making my wants few."
Henry David Thoreau, Happiness, Wealth
"If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man."
Henry David Thoreau, Nature, Life
"Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written."
Henry David Thoreau, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it."
Henry David Thoreau, Management
"You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment."
Henry David Thoreau, Life, Goals
"I have a room all to myself; it is nature."
Henry David Thoreau, Nature
"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, Life
"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, Life, Goals
"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, Nature
"Renew thyself completely each day."
Henry David Thoreau, Goals
"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 thumbnail."
Henry David Thoreau, Life
"What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook."
Henry David Thoreau, Intelligence/Wisdom, Freedom
"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, Intelligence/Wisdom, Life
"That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest."
Henry David Thoreau, Happiness, Wealth
"Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth."
Henry David Thoreau, Society
"We are constantly invited to be who we are."
Henry David Thoreau, Life
"I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well."
Henry David Thoreau, Intelligence/Wisdom
"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, Intelligence/Wisdom, Life, Freedom
"Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself."
Henry David Thoreau, Life, Nature
"We are born as innocents. We are polluted by advice."
Henry David Thoreau, Life
"Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it."
Henry David Thoreau, Success
"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, Society, Goals
"Men have become the tools of their tools."
Henry David Thoreau, Life
"Amid a world of noisy, shallow actors it is noble to stand aside and say, 'I will simply be."
Henry David Thoreau, Society, Goals
"Men are born to succeed, not to fail."
Henry David Thoreau, Success
"The path of least resistance leads to crooked rivers and crooked men."
Henry David Thoreau, Life
"I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society."
Henry David Thoreau, Happiness, Friendship, Society
"You cannot dream yourself into a character: you must hammer and forge yourself into one."
Henry David Thoreau, Goals
"Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams."
Henry David Thoreau, Friendship, Hope, Goals
"The universe is wider than our views of it."
Henry David Thoreau, Life
"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, Happiness
"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, Life
"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, Goals
"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, Goals
"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."
Henry David Thoreau, Goals, Society
"Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence."
Henry David Thoreau, Goals, Love
"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, Art
"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, Life
"It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?"
Henry David Thoreau, Goals
"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."
Henry David Thoreau, Society
"I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes."
Henry David Thoreau, Business
"My greatest skill in life has been to want but little."
Henry David Thoreau, Life, Wealth
"How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book."
Henry David Thoreau, Intelligence/Wisdom, Life
"Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe."
Henry David Thoreau, Truth
"The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend."
Henry David Thoreau, Friendship
"It is never too late to give up your prejudices."
Henry David Thoreau, Goals
"It's not worth our while to let our imperfections disturb us always."
Henry David Thoreau, Life
"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, Life
"What's the use of a fine house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?"
Henry David Thoreau, Wealth
"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, Music
"An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day."
Henry David Thoreau, Life
"This world is but a canvas for our imagination."
Henry David Thoreau, Life
"Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new."
Henry David Thoreau, Society
"A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone."
Henry David Thoreau, Wealth
"Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?"
Henry David Thoreau, Society
"All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be."
Henry David Thoreau, Life
"The language of Friendship is not words, but meanings."
Henry David Thoreau, Friendship
"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, Life
"Any fool can make a rule And any fool will mind it."
Henry David Thoreau, Society
"If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment."
Henry David Thoreau, Life
"As if you could kill time without injuring eternity."
Henry David Thoreau, Time
"Not till we are completely lost or turned around... do we begin to find ourselves."
Henry David Thoreau, Life
"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, Life
"Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake."
Henry David Thoreau, Life
"There is no remedy for love, but to love more."
Henry David Thoreau, Love
"I was not designed to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest."
Henry David Thoreau, Strength
"Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes."
Henry David Thoreau, Life
"The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer."
Henry David Thoreau, Life
"I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion."
Henry David Thoreau, Goals
"Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all."
Henry David Thoreau, Intelligence/Wisdom, Goals
"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined."
Henry David Thoreau, Life, Goals
"Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify."
Henry David Thoreau, Life
"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, Wealth
"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, Society
"Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations."
Henry David Thoreau, Intelligence/Wisdom, Wealth, Society
"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, Life
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately."
Henry David Thoreau, Goals
"What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us."
Henry David Thoreau, Life
"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them."
Henry David Thoreau, Life, Death
"Be yourself- not your idea of what you think somebody else's idea of yourself should be."
Henry David Thoreau, Goals
"Never look back unless you are planning to go that way."
Henry David Thoreau, Goals
"Dreams are the touchstones of our characters."
Henry David Thoreau, Goals
"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see."
Henry David Thoreau, Life
"How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live."
Henry David Thoreau, Arrogance, Art, Life
"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth."