Top 40 Henry David Thoreau Quotes


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 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.

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.

If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.

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

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.

Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.

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

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

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are.


I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual.

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

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

Let nothing come between you and the light.

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

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.

Things do not change; we change.

I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.

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

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.


Not till we are completely lost or turned around…do we begin to find ourselve

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

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 mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

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

I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that 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.

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

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

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

We cannot well do without our sins; they are the highway of our virtue.


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

Be yourself – not your idea of what you think somebody else's idea of yourself should be.

This world is but a canvas to our imagination.

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

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

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.

We only need to be as true to others as we are to ourselves, that there may be grounds enough for friendship.

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

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

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

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

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.

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