Henry David Thoreau Quotes
Most popular Henry David Thoreau Quotes
What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.
If the day and the 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.
We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, and meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.
It often happens that a man is more humanely related to a cat or dog than to any human being.
Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other breaks into pieces.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.
The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.
The hero obeys his own law.
Being is the great explainer.
Write while the heat is in you.
To regret deeply is to live afresh.
The heart is forever inexperienced.
A man sits as many risks as he runs.
Men are born to succeed, not to fail.
Keep your accounts on your thumbnail.
Time is but the stream I go fishing in.
Love must be as much a light as a flame.
Men have become the tools of their tools.
We must have infinite faith in each other.
The blue-bird carries the sky on his back.
The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth.
Be not merely good; be good for something.
Man is the artificer of his own happiness.
Be it life or death, we seek only reality.
Life has no blessing like a prudent friend.
The universe is wider than our views of it.
There is no remedy for love but to love more.
Lo! Men have become the tools of their tools.
This world is but canvas to our imaginations.
The world is but a canvas to the imagination.
Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.
Say what you have to say, not what you ought.
Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only.
It is never too late to give up our prejudices.
Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.
A perfectly healthy sentence is extremely rare.
We make ourselves rich by making our wants few.
We hate the kindness which we don't understand.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
Goodness is the only investment that never fails.
Even the best things are not equal to their fame.
Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.
Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.
The only way to speak the truth is speak lovingly.
Every man is a builder of a temple called his body.
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
As if we could kill time without injuring eternity!
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity!
When were the good and the brave ever in a majority?
What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.
After the first blush of sin comes its indifference.
Wherever men have lived there is a story to be told.
Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.
Humility, like darkness, reveals the heavenly lights.
That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
The language of friendship is not words but meanings.
This life is not for complaint, but for satisfaction.
An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.
None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.
Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
Not till we are lost ... do we begin to find ourselves.
City life is millions of people being lonesome together.
Music is perpetual, and only the hearing is intermittent.
There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice.
What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.
For what are the classics but the noblest thoughts of man?
Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.
It is characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend.
We should distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.
It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
Each man can interpret another's experience only by his own.
A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare.
It takes two to speak truth—one to speak and another to hear.
Our life is frittered away by detail . . . Simplify, simplify.
The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.
Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody.
I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows.
It takes two to speak the truth — one to speak and another to hear.
Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one.
A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.
We begin to praise when we begin to see a thing needs our assistance.
Politics is, as it were, the gizzard of society—full of grit & gravel.
Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.
We cannot well do without our sins; they are the highways of our virtue.
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them all.
I am as desirous of being a good neighbor as I am of being a bad subject.
Our molting season, like that of the fowls, must be a crisis in our lives.
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.
No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof.
Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth.
It is as hard to see one's self as to look backwards without turning around.
A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.
Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.
Mythology is the crop which the Old World bore before its soil was exhausted.
What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined.
While men believe in the infinite, some ponds will be thought to be bottomless.
One of the most attractive things about the flowers is their beautiful reserve.
There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages.
I love best to have each thing in its season, doing without it at all other times.
Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.
Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently appreciated by mankind.
It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?
It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.
The frontiers are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man fronts a fact.
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.
Men are probably nearer the central truth in their superstitions than in their science.
There has been no man of pure genius; as there has been none wholly destitute of genius.
It would be glorious to see man at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work.
The pleasures of the intellect are permanent, the pleasures of the heart are transitory.
The movements of the eyes express the perpetual and unconscious courtesy of the parties.
I had three chairs in my house: one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.
What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.
True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.
The universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to discuss the characters of individuals.
What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.
If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.
If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.
Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
There is a chasm between knowledge and ignorance which the arches of science can never span.
I never received more than one or two letters in my life . . . that were worth the postage.
Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.
The author's character is read from title-page to end. Of this he never corrects the proofs.
All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy; we reason from our hands to our head.
With all your science can you tell how it is, and whence it is, that light comes into the soul?
You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.
Men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up.
Government never furthered any enterprise but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way.
Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.
I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him.
Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw.
Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?
We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.
Cultivate the habit of early rising. It is unwise to keep the head long on a level with the feet.
In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, they had better aim at something high.
To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning.
Nature abhors a vacuum, and if I can only walk with sufficient carelessness I am sure to be filled.
One man lies in his words, and gets a bad reputation; another in his manners, and enjoys a good one.
Those undeserved joys which come uncalled and make us more pleased than grateful are they that sing.
Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.
Society affects to estimate men by their talents, but really feels and knows them by their character.
Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.
It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive.
The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait until the other is ready.
He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise.
Our thoughts are epochs in our lives; all else is but as a journal of the winds that blow while we are here.
Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.
It is the marriage of the soul with Nature that makes the intellect fruitful, and gives birth to imagination.
It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.
To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.
A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of any prince. Genius is not a retainer to any emperor.
Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmy that he can?
Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.
To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts; but to so love wisdom as to live according to its dictates.
I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor.
We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.
In misfortune, what friend remains a friend? Real friendship is shown in times of trouble; prosperity is full of friends.
As for style of writing—if one has anything to say, it drops from him simply and directly, as a stone falls to the ground.
In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.
He is the best sailor who can steer within fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive power out of the greatest obstacles.
Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing.
I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?
Good for the body is the work of the body, good for the soul is the work of the soul, and good for either the work of the other.
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.
I felt a positive yearning toward one bush this afternoon. There was a match found for me at last. I fell in love with a shrub oak.
It is impossible to give a soldier a good education without making him a deserter. His natural foe is the government that drills him.
I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.
Authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings and emperors, exert an influence on mankind.
A sentence should 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.
A truly good book is something as wildly natural and primitive, mysterious and marvelous, ambrosial and fertile as a fungus or a lichen.
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.
We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see. How few things can a man measure with the tape of his understanding!
I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere.
The poet is a man who lives at last by watching his moods. An old poet comes at last to watch his moods as narrowly as a cat does a mouse.
The birds I heard today, which did not come within the scope of my science, sang as freshly as if it had been the first morning of creation.
I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.
I only desire sincere relations with the worthiest of my acquaintance, that they may give me an opportunity once in a year to speak the truth.
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.
Good poetry seems too simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.
Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it alright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.
A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.
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.
A man 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.
I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech-tree, or a yellow-birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines.
Associate reverently and as much as you can with your loftiest thoughts. Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is a nest egg, by the side of which more will be laid.
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 that he hears, however measured or far away.
We worship ... Fashion. She spins and weaves and cuts with full authority. The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveller's cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same.
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.
Most men are engaged in business the greater part of their lives because the soul abhors a vacuum, and they have not discovered any continuous employment for man's nobler faculties.
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 reminded of them.
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. One cannot inflame the minds of his audience.
Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow, as if I had given vent to the stream at the lower end and consequently new fountains flowed into it at the upper.
The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.
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 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 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.
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 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 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.
William Jennings Bryan compared the way a convention feels about demonstrations to the feeling of a big man whose wife "was in the habit of beating him. When asked why he permitted it, he replied that it seemed to please her and did not hurt him." . . . I am as desirous of being a good neighbor as I am of being a bad subject.
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.
In the long run men hit only what they aim at.
Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights.
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
Heaven is under our feet, as well as over our heads.
The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.
I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do.
True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.
The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.
He is the best sailor who can steer within the fewest points of the wind, and extract a motive power out of the greatest obstacles.
In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high.
Good for the body is the work of the body, and good for the soul is the work of the soul, and good for either is the work of the other.
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.
Associate reverently and as much as you can with your loftiest thoughts. Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is a nest egg, by the side of which more will be laid.
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.
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.
If the day and the 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.
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.
