Henry David Thoreau Quotes

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

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

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

Any fool can make a rule
And any fool will mind it.

Things do not change; we change.. Henry David Thoreau

Things do not change; we change.

Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts

Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.

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

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.. Henry David Thoreau

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

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

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

A sentence should be read as if its author, had he held a plough instead of

A sentence should be read as if its author, had he held a plough instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end.

A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss

A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure.

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.

It is not all books that are as dull as their readers.. Henry David Thoreau

It is not all books that are as dull as their readers.

This curious world we inhabit is more wonderful than convenient; more beautiful than it is useful;

This curious world we inhabit is more wonderful than convenient; more beautiful than it is useful; it is more to be admired and enjoyed than used.

In my opinion, the sun was made to light worthier toil than this.. Henry David Thoreau

In my opinion, the sun was made to light worthier toil than this.

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

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

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

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is

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.

It's not worth our while to let our imperfections disturb us always.. Henry David Thoreau

It's not worth our while to let our imperfections disturb us always.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential

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.

Simplify, simplify.. Henry David Thoreau

Simplify, simplify.

Life in us is like the water in a river.. Henry David Thoreau

Life in us is like the water in a river.

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

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

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.

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.

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.

The language of Friendship is not words, but meanings.

All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be.

It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?

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

When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.

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

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.

We are constantly invited to be who we are.

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

Truth strikes us from behind and in the dark, as well as from before and in broad daylight.

Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.

Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

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.

What sort of philosophers are we, who know absolutely nothing of the origin and destiny of cats?

It is remarkable how long men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pond without taking the trouble to sound it.

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty.

When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality.

Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day.

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.

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.

I did not know that mankind were suffering for want of gold. I have seen a little of it. I know that it is very malleable, but not so malleable as wit. A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.

I silently smiled at my incessant good fortune.

On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world.

Every blade in the field - Every leaf in the forest - lays down its life in its season as beautifully as it was taken up.

Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.

Next to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are.

With what infinite & unwearied expectation and proclamations the cocks usher in every dawn, as if there had never been one before.

What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.

I mean that they (students) should not play life, or study it merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning to end. How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living? Methinks this would exercise their minds as much as mathematics.

Those things for which the most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is an important item in the term bill, while for the far more valuable education which he gets by associating with the most cultivated of his contemporaries no charge is made.

It is remarkable that, notwithstanding the universal favor with which the New Testament is outwardly received, and even the bigotry with which it is defended, there is no hospitality shown to, there is no appreciation of, the order of truth with which it deals.

There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dulness. I need only suggest what kind of sermons are still listened to in the most enlightened countries. There are such words as joy and sorrow, but they are only the burden of a psalm, sung with a nasal twang, while we believe in the ordinary and mean.

Men are born to succeed, not to fail.

Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.

Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven.

He who hears the rippling of rivers in these degenerate days will not utterly despair.

Men say they know many things;
But lo! they have taken wings, -
The arts and sciences,
And a thousand appliances;
The wind that blows
Is all that any body knows

Commonly men will only be brave as their fathers were brave, or timid.

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

The perception of beauty is a moral test.

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.

The true price of anything you do is the amount of time you exchange for it.

Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. 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.

Se uma planta não pode viver de acordo com sua natureza, ela morre. O mesmo ocorre com um homem.

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

ابدأ بقراءة أفضل الكتب، وإلا لن تجد الفرصة لقراءتهم أبداً

Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as apply to them. I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits.

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

There is just as much beauty visible to us in the landscape as we are prepared to appreciate, and not a grain more. ... A man sees only what concerns him.

We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.

Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

Wildness is the preservation of the World.

Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.

Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength.

A lake is a landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.

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

I thus found that the student who wishes for a shelter can obtain one for a lifetime at an expense not greater than the rent which he now pays annually. If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself; and my shortcomings and inconsistencies do not affect the truth of my statement.

To be awake is to be alive.

The sail, the play of its pulse so like our own lives: so thin and yet so full of life, so noiseless when it labors hardest, so noisy and impatient when least effective.

The trees and shrubs rear white arms to the sky on every side; and where were walls and fences, we see forms stretching in frolic gambols across the dusky landscape, as if Nature had strewn her fresh designs over the fields by night as models for man's art.

There is a low mist in the woods -
It is a good day to study lichens.

The tops of mountains are among the unfinished parts of the globe, whither it is a slight insult to the gods to climb and pry into their secrets, and try their effect on our humanity. Only daring and insolent men, perchance, go there.

The spruce and cedar on its shores, hung with gray lichens, looked at a distance like the ghosts of trees. Ducks were sailing here and there on its surface, and a solitary loon, like a more living wave, - a vital spot on the lake's surface, - laughed and frolicked, and showed its straight leg, for our amusement.

The moose will perhaps one day become extinct; but how naturally then, when it exists only as a fossil relic, and unseen as that, may the poet or sculptor invent a fabulous animal with similar branching and leafy horns, - a sort of fucus or lichen in bone, - to be the inhabitant of such a forest as this!

This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting. A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence.

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.

Thus the great civilizer sends out its emissaries, sooner or later, to every sandy cape and light-house of the New World which the census-taker visits, and summons the savage there to surrender.

The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let us spend our lives in conceiving then. The poet or the artist never yet had so fair and noble a design but some of his posterity at least could accomplish it.

Enthusiasm is a supernatural serenity.

While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them

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.

Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.

Men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men.

So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre.

The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.

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

The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend.

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

There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.

For if the truth were known, Love cannot speak, But only thinks and does; Though surely out 'twill leak Without the help of Greek, Or any tongue.

Le mieux que je puisse faire pour mon ami est d'être son ami.

Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most need, though it be your example which leaves them far behind. If you give money, spend yourself with it, and do not merely abandon it to them.

No doubt you can get more in your market for a quart of milk than for a quart of blood, but that is not the market that heroes carry their blood to.

The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of what wisdom and valor and generosity we have.

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

It is not for a man to put himself in such an attitude to society, but to maintain himself in whatever attitude he find himself through obedience to the laws of his being, which will never be one of opposition to a just government, if he should chance to meet with such.

They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar

The doctors are all agreed that I am suffering from want of society. Was never a case like it. First, I did not know that I was suffering at all. Secondly, as an Irishman might say, I had thought it was indigestion of the society I got.

I rejoice that horses and steers have to be broken before they can be made the slaves of men, and that men themselves have some wild oats still left to sow before they become submissive members of society.

I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things.

We hear and apprehend only what we already half know.

Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost. One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned anything of absolute value by living.

It is only when we forget our learning, do we begin to know.

Tatsächlich hat der arbeitende Mensch heute nicht mehr die Muße, sein Leben Tag für Tag wirklich sinnvoll zu gestalten.Wahrhaft menschliche Beziehungen zu seinen Mitmenschen kann er sich nicht leisten; es würde den Marktwert seiner Arbeit herabsetzen. Es fehlt ihm an Zeit, etwas anderes zu sein als eine Maschine.

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