Henry David Thoreau Quotes (701 Quotes)

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

Sometimes we are inclined to class those who are once-and-a-half witted with the half-witted, because we appreciate only a third part of their wit.

In wilderness is the preservation of the world.

Removing the weeds, putting fresh soil about the bean stems, and encouraging this weed which I had sown, making the yellow soil express its summer thought in bean leaves and blossoms rather than in wormwood and piper and millet grass, making the earth say beans instead of grass, this was my daily work....

Absolutely speaking, Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you is by no means a golden rule, but the best of current silver. An honest man would have but little occasion for it. It is golden not to have any rule at all in such a case.

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

Waves of a serene life pass over us from time to time, like flakes of sunlight over the fields in cloudy weather.

I lose my respect for the man who can make the mystery of sex the subject of a coarse jest, yet when you speak earnestly and seriously on the subject, is silent

A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.

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

There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.

It is strange to talk of miracles, revelations, inspiration, and the like, as things past, while love remains.

True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.

You know about a person who deeply interests you more than you can be told. A look, a gesture, an act, which to everybody else is insignificant tells you more about that one than words can.

He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something by behavior as well as by application. It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws. The study of geometry is a petty and idle exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger system than the starry one. Mathematics should be mixed not only with physics but with ethics that is mixed mathematics. The fact which interests us most is the life of the naturalist. The purest science is still biographical.

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.

The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure.

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

Not only must we be good, but we must also be good for something.

I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but and truth were not and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board.

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

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

All good things are cheap all bad are very dear.

Men profess to be lovers of music, but for the most part they give no evidence of it in their opinions and lives that they have heard it. It would not leave them narrow-minded and bigoted.

We are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspected.

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

Government is at best but an expedient but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.

We were born to succeed, not to fail.

It is as hard to see one's self as to look backwards without turning round.

Of what significance are the things you can forget.

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

Simplify, simplify.

Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.

The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit not a fossil earth, but a living earth compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic.

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.

The great art of life is how to turn the surplus life of the soul into life for the body.

Far travel, very far travel, or travail, comes to almost the worth of staying home.

There is no just and serene criticism as yet.

One farmer says to me, ''You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with'' and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle.

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

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

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.

A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind.

Decay and disease are often beautiful, like the pearly tear of the shellfish and the hectic glow of consumption.

I do not know but thoughts written down thus in a journal might be printed in the same form with greater advantage than if the related ones were brought together into separate essays.

How rarely I meet with a man who can be free, even in thought We all live according to rule. Some men are bedridden all world-ridden.

People die of fright and live of confidence.

Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.

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

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.