Henry David Thoreau

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.
– Henry David Thoreau

An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.
– Henry David Thoreau

Men have become the tools of their tools.
– Henry David Thoreau

The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that
other is ready.
– Henry David Thoreau

It is not enough to be busy. The question is: what are we busy about?
– Henry David Thoreau

It takes two to speak truth – one to speak and another to hear.
– Henry David Thoreau

It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living
freely and nobly.
– Henry David Thoreau

My friend is one who takes me for what I am.
– Henry David Thoreau

You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.
– Henry David Thoreau

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
– Henry David Thoreau

In the long run men hit only what they aim at.
– Henry David Thoreau

I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be
it good or bad.
– Henry David Thoreau

Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.
– Henry David Thoreau

Nothing is so much to be feared as fear.
– Henry David Thoreau

A true account of the actual is the rarest poetry, for common sense always takes a hasty
and superficial view.
– Henry David Thoreau

There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.
– Henry David Thoreau

Men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up.
– Henry David Thoreau

It is never too late to give up your prejudices.
– Henry David Thoreau

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning
hand.
– Henry David Thoreau

The perception of beauty is a moral test.
– Henry David Thoreau

Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.
– Henry David Thoreau

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

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.
– Henry David Thoreau

I believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the night in which the corn grows.
– 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

Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.
– Henry David Thoreau

One must maintain a little bittle of summer, even in the middle of winter.
– Henry David Thoreau

Be not simply good; be good for something.
– Henry David Thoreau

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

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.
– Henry David Thoreau

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.
– Henry David Thoreau

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

Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an
instant?
– 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 they had to teach; and not, when I came to die,
discover that I had not lived.
– Henry David Thoreau

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.
– Henry David Thoreau

I hear many condemn these men because they were so few. When were the good and the
brave ever in a majority?
– Henry David Thoreau

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.
– Henry David Thoreau

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

That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
– Henry David Thoreau

Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks
of himself, that it is which determines, or rather, indicates, his fate.
– Henry David Thoreau

The savage in man is never quite eradicated.
– Henry David Thoreau

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed
desperation.
– Henry David Thoreau

There is no remedy for love, but to love more.
– Henry David Thoreau

For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms, and did my
duty faithfully, though I never received one cent for it.
– Henry David Thoreau

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

The frontiers are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man fronts a fact.
– Henry David Thoreau

Water is the only drink for a wise man.
– 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 a success unexpected in common hours.
– Henry David Thoreau

You must not only aim right, but draw the bow with all your might.
– Henry David Thoreau

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.
– Henry David Thoreau

Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.
– Henry David Thoreau

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

We are as much as we see. Faith is sight and knowledge. The hands only serve the eyes.
– Henry David Thoreau

You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.
– Henry David Thoreau

It is so rare to meet with a man outdoors who cherishes a worthy thought in his mind,
which is independent of the labor of his hands.
– Henry David Thoreau

Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one.
– Henry David Thoreau

I love a broad margin to my life.
– Henry David Thoreau

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
– Henry David Thoreau

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

Philantrophy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently appreciated by mankind.
– Henry David Thoreau

What people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can.
– Henry David Thoreau

Men are born to succeed, not fail.
– Henry David Thoreau

Say what you have to say, not what you ought.
– Henry David Thoreau

A truly good book is something as wildly natural and primitive, mysterious and marvelous,
ambrosial and fertile as a fungus or a lichen.
– Henry David Thoreau

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.
– Henry David Thoreau

I love best to have each thing in its season, doing without it at all other times.
– Henry David Thoreau

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an
infinite expectation of the dawn.
– Henry David Thoreau

What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?
– Henry David Thoreau

The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend.
– Henry David Thoreau