Henry David Thoreau Quotes

A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars.
Henry David Thoreau

A kitten is so flexible that she is almost double; the hind parts are equivalent to another kitten with which the forepart plays. She does not discover that her tail belongs to her until you tread on it.
Henry David Thoreau

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

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.
Henry David Thoreau

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.
Henry David Thoreau

Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.
Henry David Thoreau

All endeavor calls for the ability to tramp the last mile, shape the last plan, endure the last hours toil. The fight to the finish spirit is the one... characteristic we must posses if we are to face the future as finishers.
Henry David Thoreau

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

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

As for doing good; that is one of the professions which is full. Moreover I have tried it fairly and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution.
Henry David Thoreau

As if we could kill time without injuring eternity!
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

Be not simply good - be good for something.
Henry David Thoreau

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

Being is the great explainer.
Henry David Thoreau

Beware of all enterprises that require a new set of clothes.
Henry David Thoreau

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

Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.
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

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

Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends... Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.
Henry David Thoreau

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

Dreams are the touchstones of our character.
Henry David Thoreau

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.
Henry David Thoreau

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

Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe.
Henry David Thoreau

For what are the classics but the noblest thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old.
Henry David Thoreau

Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams.
Henry David Thoreau

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

Goodness is the only investment that never fails.
Henry David Thoreau

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
Henry David Thoreau

How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?
Henry David Thoreau

How does it become a man to behave towards the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.
Henry David Thoreau

How earthy old people become - moldy as the grave! Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no foretaste of immortality in it. They remind me of earthworms and mole crickets.
Henry David Thoreau

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.
Henry David Thoreau

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

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.
Henry David Thoreau

I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.
Henry David Thoreau

I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.
Henry David Thoreau

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.
Henry David Thoreau

I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls.
Henry David Thoreau

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.
Henry David Thoreau

I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.
Henry David Thoreau

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

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

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

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.
Henry David Thoreau

I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.
Henry David Thoreau

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

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

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.
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

If a man constantly aspires is he not elevated?
Henry David Thoreau

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.
Henry David Thoreau

If a man loses pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music in which he hears, however measured, or far away.
Henry David Thoreau

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.
Henry David Thoreau

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.
Henry David Thoreau

If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself.
Henry David Thoreau

If misery loves company, misery has company enough.
Henry David Thoreau

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.
Henry David Thoreau

If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.
Henry David Thoreau

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

If you give money, spend yourself with it.
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

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