Henry David Thoreau

In the long run you only hit what you aim at. Therefore, though you should fail immediately, you had better aim at something high.

If the day and the night are such that you greet them with with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, more elastic, more starry, more immortal--that is your success.
Henry David Thoreau - Walden, 1854
It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.

We falsely attribute to men a determined character - putting together all their yesterdays - and averaging them - we presume we know them. Pity the man who has character to support - it is worse than a large family - he is the silent poor indeed.

All good things are wild, and free.

Men are born to succeed, not fail.

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.

Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is in prison.
Henry David Thoreau - Walden
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it but as I drink, I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is.

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
Henry David Thoreau - Walden; Where I Lived, And What I Lived For
I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake his neighbours up.

Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.
Henry David Thoreau - Walking (1862)
In wildness is the preservation of the world.

We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.

Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.
Henry David Thoreau - "Walden", 1854
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

There is no remedy for love but to love more.

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 he hears, how ever measured or far away.
Henry David Thoreau - Walden, Economy.
I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.

A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of any prince.
Henry David Thoreau - "Where I Live"
It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the filed, but not to describe human character.

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

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.
Henry David Thoreau - "Walden," the Conclusion
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board.
Henry David Thoreau - Walden: Economy, 1854
Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them.

Our truest life is when we are in our dreams awake.
Henry David Thoreau - O Magazine, May 2004
Every man is the builder of a temple called his body.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do want society.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.
Henry David Thoreau - Walden (1854)
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.
Henry David Thoreau - Walden (1970)
Things do not change; we change.
Henry David Thoreau - Walden: Higher Laws, 1854
Goodness is the only investment that never fails.
Henry David Thoreau - "Walden"
Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? 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.

As if there were safety in stupidity alone.

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

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.
Henry David Thoreau - Simplify Simplify
Say what you have to say, not what you ought. any truth is better than make-Believe!

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestioned ability of a man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

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.

A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.

Good poetry seems too simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.
Henry David Thoreau - Simplify simplify
Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.

In the long run, you hit only what you aim at: Therefore aim high.
Henry David Thoreau - Walden
I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, cattle, barns, and farming tools, for these are more easily acquired than gotten rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labour in.

Cultivate the habit of early rising. It is unwise to keep the head long on a level with the feet.

It is characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
Henry David Thoreau - WALDEN: Or, Life in the Woods
Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!
Henry David Thoreau - Walden, Chapter 1: Economy
The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.

As for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.

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

I have lived some thirty years on this planet and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.

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 faraway.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he imaged, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.
Henry David Thoreau - ?
Many go fishing without knowing it is fish they are after.

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

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

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

Men have become the tools of their tools.

What people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can.
Henry David Thoreau - Walden
Petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of reality.
Henry David Thoreau - "Walden", 1854
Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.

Heroes are often the most ordinary of men.

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. I would drink deeper; fish fill the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet. I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.

The way by which you may get money almost without exception leads downward.

I stand in awe of my body.

Men have become the tools of their tools

Must be out-of-doors enough to get experience of wholesome reality, as a ballast to thought and sentiment. Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life

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

Most people dread finding out when they come to die that they have never really lived.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

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

Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.
Henry David Thoreau - in Walden, "Economy"
What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy.

Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize the infinite extent of our relations.
Henry David Thoreau - Civil Disobience
The only obligation which I have a right to assume, is to do at any time what I think right.

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. It looks poorest when you are the richest.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

It is pleasant to have been to a place the way a river went.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.

I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.

In solitude especialy do we begin to appreciate the advantage of living with someone who can think.
Henry David Thoreau - Walden
Time is but a 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.

My friend is one... who take me for what I am.

The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way.
Henry David Thoreau - book
The hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men.

In what concerns you much, do not think that you have companions: know that you are alone in the world.

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

Water is the only drink for a wise man.

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
Henry David Thoreau - Walden, 1854
I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.
Henry David Thoreau - Walden (1854)
The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.
Henry David Thoreau - Vol. 2, p.318 Houghton Mifflin
Do what nobody else can do for you. Omit to do anything else.

In wilderness is the preservation of the world.
Henry David Thoreau - Walden, Conclusion, 1854
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.
Henry David Thoreau - "Walden", pp. 323- 324
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. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. 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.
Henry David Thoreau - simplify Simplify
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
Henry David Thoreau - Walden
Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.

Be not simply good - be good for something.
Henry David Thoreau - Jan. 3, 1861
Thank God men cannot as yet fly and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.

I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

Thank God men cannot as yet fly and lay waste the sky as well as the earth!

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, not 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.

One may discover a new side to his most intimate friend when for the first time he hears him speak in public. He will be stranger to him as he is more familiar to the audience. The longest intimacy could not foretell how he would behave then
Henry David Thoreau - "An Essay on Civil Disobedience," 1849.
Voting for the right is doing nothing for it.

Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now.

Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.
Henry David Thoreau - Simplify Simplify
How sweet it would be to treat men and things, for an hour, for just what they are!

Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.

What men call good fellowship is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter which lie close together to keep each other warm.

[Water is] the only drink for a wise man.

We must have infinite faith in each other. If we have not, we must never let it leak out that we have not.

I have learned this at least by my experiment: if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

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.

I derive no pleasure from talking with a young woman simply because she has regular features.
Henry David Thoreau - Wednesday, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without.
Henry David Thoreau - "Resistance to Civil Government"
I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion.
Henry David Thoreau - Journal, January 21, 1838
Man is the artificer of his own happiness.

It is never too late to give up your prejudices.

To regret deeply is to live afresh.
Henry David Thoreau - Walden: Reading, 1854
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.
Henry David Thoreau - Journal, July 25, 1839
There is no remedy for love but to love more.

In dreams we see ourselves naked and acting our real characters, even more clearly than we see others awake.

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
Henry David Thoreau - "Resistance to Civil Government"
I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.

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

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

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestioned ability of a man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

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.

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

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

- Henry David Thoreau