Henry David Thoreau Quotes

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

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.

Things do not change; we change.

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

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

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

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

This world is but a canvas to our imagination.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.

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.

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.

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

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.

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.

All good things are wild and free.

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

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

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

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.

There is no remedy for love, but to love more.

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

Not till we are completely lost or turned around... do we begin to find ourselves.

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

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.

I was not designed to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.

Any fool can make a rule And any fool will mind it.

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.

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

All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be.

The language of Friendship is not words, but meanings.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

It's not worth our while to let our imperfections disturb us always.

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

My greatest skill in life has been to want but little

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

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

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

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?

I can alter my life by altering my attitude. He who would have nothing to do with thorns must never attempt to gather flowers.

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

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

You cannot dream yourself into a character: you must hammer and forge yourself into one.

Amid a world of noisy, shallow actors it is noble to stand aside and say, 'I will simply be.

Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.

We are born as innocents. We are polluted by advice.

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

I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race in it's gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals.

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

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

t 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.

That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.

The question is not what you look at, but what you see.

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

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

If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man.

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

I have, as it were, my own sun and moon and stars, and a little world all to myself.

The tragedy in a man’s life is what dies inside of him while he lives.

To be awake is to be completely alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake.