Henry David Thoreau Quotes

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

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

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

After the first blush of sin comes its indifference.
Henry David Thoreau

Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.
Henry David Thoreau

Alas! how little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape!
Henry David Thoreau

All endeavor calls for the ability to tramp the last mile, shape the last plan, endure the last hours toil. The fight to the finish spirit is the one... characteristic we must posses if we are to face the future as finishers.
Henry David Thoreau

All men are children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the morning.
Henry David Thoreau

All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.
Henry David Thoreau

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

An unclean person is universally a slothful one.
Henry David Thoreau

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.
Henry David Thoreau

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.
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

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
Henry David Thoreau

As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society.
Henry David Thoreau

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.
Henry David Thoreau

Be not simply good - be good for something.
Henry David Thoreau

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

Before printing was discovered, a century was equal to a thousand years.
Henry David Thoreau

Being is the great explainer.
Henry David Thoreau

Beware of all enterprises that require a new set of clothes.
Henry David Thoreau

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.
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

Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.
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

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

Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.
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

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

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

Do what nobody else can do for you. Omit to do anything else.
Henry David Thoreau

Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.
Henry David Thoreau

Dreams are the touchstones of our character.
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

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.
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

Every people have gods to suit their circumstances.
Henry David Thoreau

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

Faith never makes a confession.
Henry David Thoreau

Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams.
Henry David Thoreau

Front yards are not made to walk in, but, at most, through, and you could go in the back way.
Henry David Thoreau

Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.
Henry David Thoreau

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.
Henry David Thoreau

God reigns when we take a liberal view, when a liberal view is presented to us.
Henry David Thoreau

Goodness is the only investment that never fails.
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

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
Henry David Thoreau

How can any man be weak who dares to be at all?
Henry David Thoreau

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

How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.
Henry David Thoreau

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
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

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

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.
Henry David Thoreau

I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls.
Henry David Thoreau

I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.
Henry David Thoreau