Quotes

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

To be admitted to Nature's hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push aside the curtain.
-Henry David Thoreau

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.
-Henry David Thoreau

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

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

Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another?
-Henry David Thoreau

Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them a side.
-Henry David Thoreau

Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other breaks into pieces.
-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

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

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

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

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.
-Henry David Thoreau

Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing.
-Henry David Thoreau

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

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

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

Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?
-Henry David Thoreau

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.
-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

Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.
-Henry David Thoreau

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end.
-Henry David Thoreau

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

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

We are not what we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for what we are capable of being.
-Henry David Thoreau

A man's interest in a single bluebird is worth more than a complete but dry list of the fauna and flora of a town.
-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

Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?
-Henry David Thoreau

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

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

Books are to be distinguished by the grandeur of their topics even more than by the manner in which they are treated.
-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

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.
-Henry David Thoreau

The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.
-Henry David Thoreau

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.
-Henry David Thoreau

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.
-Henry David Thoreau

Great men, unknown to their generation, have their fame among the great who have preceded them, and all true worldly fame subsides from their high estimate beyond the stars.
-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

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

Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them.
-Henry David Thoreau

Some are reputed sick and some are not. It often happens that the sicker man is the nurse to the sounder.
-Henry David Thoreau

I was more independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment.
-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

Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve.
-Henry David Thoreau

We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.
-Henry David Thoreau