Henry david thoreau quotes

I am a happy camper so I guess I’m doing something right. Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.

Thank God, they cannot cut down the clouds!

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.

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

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

That government is best which governs least.

Life isn't about finding yourself; it's about creating yourself. So live the life you imagined.

To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.

There is nothing more difficult to find than oneself.

If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intent of doing you good, you should run for your life.

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

What lies before us and what lies behind us are small matters compared to what lies within us. And when we bring what is within out into the world, miracles happen.

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity and trust.

When was it that men agreed to respect the appearance and not the reality?

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.

He who walks alone, waits for no-one.

Everyone must believe in something. I believe I'll go canoeing.

We are constantly invited to be who we are.

Wealth can't buy heath, but heath can buy wealth.

Simplify your life. Don't waste the years struggling for things that are unimportant. Don't burden yourself with possessions. Keep your needs and wants simple and enjoy what you have. Don't destroy your peace of mind by looking back, worrying about the past. Live in the present. Simplify!

It is not enough that we are truthful; we must cherish and carry out high purposes to be truthful about.

The soul grows by subtraction, not addition.

All good things are wild and free.

It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?

Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.

The most difficult thing to understand during conversation is silence.

A bore is someone who takes away my solitude and doesn't give me companionship in return.

When were the good and the brave ever in a majority?

I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.

Sweep away the clutter of things that complicate our lives.

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

The voice of nature is always encouraging.

Things don't change. We change.

It is what a man thinks of himself that really determines his fate.

Let nothing come between you and the light.

Men have become the tools of their tools.

I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees.

It is the marriage of the soul with nature that makes the intellect fruitful, and gives birth to imagination

When it's time to die, let us not discover that we have never lived.

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.

There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.

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

I have lately got back to that glorious society called Solitude.

It 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.

If you will not try, you will go to your grave with your song still inside you.

The meeting of two eternities, the past and future....is precisely the present moment.

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

The only people who ever get anyplace interesting are the people who get lost.

In an unjust society the only place for a just man is prison.

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.

The press is, almost without exception, corrupt.

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

We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder-cloud, and the rain.

When any real progress is made, we unlearned and learn anew what we thought we knew before.

In the long run, you hit only what you aim at.

Since most of us spend our lives doing ordinary tasks, the most important thing is to carry them out extraordinarily well.

There is no beginning too small.

Thought is the sculptor who can create the person you want to be.

How prompt we are to satisfy the hunger and thirst of our bodies; how slow to satisfy the hunger and thirst of our souls!

Every oak tree started out as a couple of nuts who stood their ground.

When we bring what is within out into the world, miracles happen.

The path of least resistance leads to crooked rivers and crooked men.

Things do not change; we change.

I love Nature partly because she is not man, but a retreat from him. None of his institutions control or pervade her. There a different kind of right prevails. In her midst I can be glad with an entire gladness. If this world were all man, I could not stretch myself, I should lose all hope. He is constraint, she is freedom to me. He makes me wish for another world. She makes me content with this.

Goodness is the only investment that never fails.

It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

Love must be as much a light as it is a flame.

Kindness to children, love for children, goodness to children-- these are the only investments that never fail.

In 1848, Thoreau went to jail for refusing, as a protest against the Mexican war, to pay his poll tax. When RW Emerson came to bail him out, Emerson said, 'Henry, what are you doing in there?' Thoreau quietly replied, 'Ralph, what are you doing out there?'

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. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.

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

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.

It's the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us. The question is not what you look at but what you see.

Where the most beautiful wild flowers grow, there mans spirit is fed and poets grow.

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

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.

I have no time to be in a hurry.

Time is like a handful of sand - the tighter you grasp it, the faster it runs through your fingers.

We are happy in proportion to the things we can do without.

There will never be a really free and enlightened state until the state comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived.

Sobriety, severity, and self-respect are the foundations of all true sociality.

Dissent without action is consent.

When a man truly commits, the universe will conspire to assure his success.

Do not despair of your life. You have force enough to overcome your obstacles.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined...

He who owns little is little owned.

The greatest tragedy in life is to spend your whole life fishing only to discover it was never fish that you were after.

The only way to tell the truth is to speak with kindness. Only the words of a loving man can be heard.

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.

This world is but a canvas to our imagination.

Talk about slavery! It is not the peculiar institution of the South. It exists wherever men are bought and sold, wherever a man allows himself to be made a mere thing or a tool, and surrenders his inalienable rights of reason and conscience. Indeed, this slavery is more complete than that which enslaves the body alone.

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.

If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.

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.

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

City life is millions of people being lonesome together.

To have made even one person's life a little better, that is to succeed.

I make myself rich by making my wants few.

My profession is to always find God in nature.

That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest.

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.

The question is not what you look at – but how you look & whether you see.

Anyone in a free society where the laws are unjust has an obligation to break the law.

When you knock, ask to see God — none of the servants.

It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear.

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.

There is no remedy for love but to love more.

All things in this world must be seen with youthful, hopeful eyes.

The secret of achievement is to hold a picture of a successful outcome in mind.

All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable.

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.

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.

Maturity is when all of your mirrors turn into windows.

I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the wisest thinks he must attend to in a day; how singular an affair he thinks he must omit. When the mathematician would solve a difficult problem, he first frees the equation of all incumbrances, and reduces it to its simplest terms. So simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real. Probe the earth to see where your main roots run.

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.

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

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

A friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us. The friend asks no return but that his friend will religiously accept and wear and not disgrace his apotheosis of him. They cherish each other's hopes. They are kind to each other's dreams.

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

Tough times don't last but tough people do. No matter how slow you go, you are still lapping everybody on the couch. Men are born to succeed, not fail.

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; there is no other life but this, or the like of this. I wish to live ever as to derive my satisfactions and inspirations from the commonest events, everyday phenomena, so that what my senses hourly perceive, my daily walk, the conversation of my neighbors, may inspire me, and I may dream of no heaven but that which lies about me.

Think for yourself, or others will think for you without thinking of you.