Henry David Thoreau quotes (125):

  • A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can let alone.
  • To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, an they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.
  • Men are born to succeed, not to fail.
  • Dreams are the touchstones of our character.
  • 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.
  • The man who goes alone can start today but he who travels with another must wait till the other is ready, and it may be along time before they get off.
  • Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
  • I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
  • Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.
  • 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.
  • Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.
  • The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.
  • It is not enough to be busy the question is what are we busy about
  • I do not wish to kill nor to be killed, but I can foresee circumstances in which these things would be by me unavoidable.
  • 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.
  • Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.
  • The world is but a canvas to the imagination.
  • There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at its root.
  • 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.
  • That government is best which governs least. - from Civil Disobedience
  • Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.
  • Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.
  • When I read some of the rules for speaking and writing the English language correctly...I think-- Any fool can make a rule And every fool will mind it.
  • There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living. - from Live Without Principle
  • The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward. - from Live Without Principle
  • The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.
  • The universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to discuss the characters of individuals.
  • What a man thinks of himself that is what determines, or rather indicates his fate.
  • True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.
  • It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.
  • It takes two to speak truth - One to speak, and another to hear.
  • Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is in prison.
  • A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom. - from Live Without Principle
  • 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.
  • To reget deeply is to live afresh.
  • The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible And indescribably as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, A segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.
  • 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, this is no other life but this.
  • Life should begin with age and its privileges and accumulations, and end with youth and its capacity to splendidly enjoy such advantages.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Nature abhors a vacuum, and if I can only walk with sufficient carelessness I am sure to be filled.
  • We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect.
  • That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
  • There are now-a-days professors of philosophy but not philosophers.
  • Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his friends for his life.
  • Why should we be in such desperate hast to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
  • However mean your life is, meet it and live it do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are the richest.
  • If a man constantly aspires is he not elevated
  • In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, they had better aim at something high.
  • What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.