Henry David Thoreau Quotes

I stand in awe of my body.

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.

Most 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.

In wildness is the preservation of the world.

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.

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.

Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

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

Men are born to succeed, not fail.

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

It is as hard to see one`s self as to look backwards without turning around.

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

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

However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do want society.

Cultivate the habit of early rising. It is unwise to keep the head long on a level with the feet.

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

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

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.

It is never too late to give up your prejudices.

Men have become the tools of their tools.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you`ve imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.

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

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.

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

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

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

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

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.

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

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

What is the use of a house if you haven`t got a tolerable planet to put it on?

Things do not change; we change.

None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.

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

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

Men have become the tools of their tools.

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

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?

All good things are wild, and free.

There is no remedy for love but to love more.

The law will never make men free, it is men that have to make the law free.

I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favour in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. 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.

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.

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

Things do not change; we change.

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

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.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

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

The bluebird carries the sky on his back.

I belive that there is a subtile magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright. It is not indifferent to us which way we walk. There is a right way; but we are very liable from heedlessness and stupidity to take the wrong one. We would fain take that walk, never yet taken by us through this actual world, which is perfectly symbolical of the path which we love to travel in the interior and ideal world; and sometimes, no doubt, we find it difficult to choose our direction, because it does not yet exist distinctly in our idea.

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.

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

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.

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

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

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

Goodness is the only investment that never fails.

This world is but a canvas to our imagination.

Dreams are the touchstones of our character.

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

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

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

Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.

The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way.

Man is the artificer of his own happiness.

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

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.

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.

Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.

I have lately been surveying the Walden woods so extensively and minutely that I now see it mapped in my mind's eye - as, indeed, on paper - as so many men's wood-lots, and am aware when I walk there that I am at a given moment passing from such a one's wood-lot to such another's. I fear this particular dry knowledge may affect my imagination and fancy, that it will not be easy to see so much wildness and native vigor there as formerly.

Do not worry if you have built your castles in the air. They are where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

It is never too late to give up our prejudices.

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

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

(Water is) the only drink for a wise man.

Fire is the most tolerable third party

This life is not for complaint, but for satisfaction

When a dog runs at you, whistle for him.

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land, there is no other life but this.

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.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

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.

What`s the use of a fine house if you haven`t got a tolerable planet to put it on?

Water is the only drink for a wise man.

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.

I have heard of a dog that barked at every stranger who approached his master`s premises with clothes on, but was easily quieted by a naked thief

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

All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.

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

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

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.

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