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Quotes by Henry David Thoreau


The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.
– Henry David Thoreau

The question is not what you look at, but what you see.
– Henry David Thoreau

It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?
– Henry David Thoreau
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 kitten is so flexible that she is almost double; the hind parts are equivalent to another kitten with which the forepart plays. She does not discover that her tail belongs to her until you tread on it.
– Henry David Thoreau
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.
– 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
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 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
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 we could kill time without injuring eternity!
– Henry David Thoreau
Being is the great explainer.
– Henry David Thoreau
Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.
– 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
Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe.
– Henry David Thoreau
For what are the classics but the noblest thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old.
– Henry David Thoreau
Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams.
– Henry David Thoreau
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
– 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 earthy old people become - moldy as the grave! Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no foretaste of immortality in it. They remind me of earthworms and mole crickets.
– Henry David Thoreau
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.
– Henry David Thoreau
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.
– 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 frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech-tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines.
– Henry David Thoreau
I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls.
– Henry David Thoreau
I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.
– Henry David Thoreau
I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.
– Henry David Thoreau
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
I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.
– Henry David Thoreau
If a man constantly aspires is he not elevated?
– Henry David Thoreau
If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.
– Henry David Thoreau
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.
– Henry David Thoreau
If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself.
– Henry David Thoreau
If misery loves company, misery has company enough.
– Henry David Thoreau
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.
– Henry David Thoreau
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.
– Henry David Thoreau
If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.
– Henry David Thoreau
If you give money, spend yourself with it.
– Henry David Thoreau
In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.
– Henry David Thoreau
In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, they had better aim at something high.
– Henry David Thoreau
It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.
– Henry David Thoreau
It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
– Henry David Thoreau
It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.
– Henry David Thoreau
It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all.
– Henry David Thoreau
It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive.
– Henry David Thoreau
It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear.
– Henry David Thoreau
It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.
– Henry David Thoreau
Law never made men a whit more just.
– Henry David Thoreau
Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.
– Henry David Thoreau
Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.
– Henry David Thoreau
Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
– Henry David Thoreau
Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.
– Henry David Thoreau
Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.
– Henry David Thoreau
Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.
– Henry David Thoreau
Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.
– Henry David Thoreau
Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.
– Henry David Thoreau
None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
– Henry David Thoreau
Not only must we be good, but we must also be good for something.
– Henry David Thoreau
Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.
– Henry David Thoreau
Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.
– Henry David Thoreau
Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.
– Henry David Thoreau
Only he is successful in his business who makes that pursuit which affords him the highest pleasure sustain him.
– Henry David Thoreau
Only nature has a right to grieve perpetually, for she only is innocent. Soon the ice will melt, and the blackbirds sing along the river which he frequented, as pleasantly as ever. The same everlasting serenity will appear in this face of God, and we will not be sorrowful, if he is not.
– Henry David Thoreau
Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end.
– Henry David Thoreau
Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify.
– Henry David Thoreau
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.
– Henry David Thoreau
Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.
– Henry David Thoreau
Politics is the gizzard of society, full of grit and gravel, and the two political parties are its opposite halves - sometimes split into quarters - which grind on each other. Not only individuals but states have thus a confirmed dyspepsia.
– Henry David Thoreau
Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.
– Henry David Thoreau
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
– Henry David Thoreau
Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.
– Henry David Thoreau
Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.
– Henry David Thoreau
Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other breaks into pieces.
– Henry David Thoreau
The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.
– Henry David Thoreau
The bluebird carries the sky on his back.
– Henry David Thoreau
The Brahmins say that in their books there are many predictions of times in which it will rain. But press those books as strongly as you can, you can not get out of them a drop of water. So you can not get out of all the books that contain the best precepts the smallest good deed.
– Henry David Thoreau
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.
– Henry David Thoreau
The fibers of all things have their tension and are strained like the strings of an instrument.
– Henry David Thoreau
The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.
– Henry David Thoreau
The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.
– Henry David Thoreau
The heart is forever inexperienced.
– Henry David Thoreau
The language of friendship is not words but meanings.
– Henry David Thoreau
The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.
– Henry David Thoreau
The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?
– Henry David Thoreau
The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.
– Henry David Thoreau
The perception of beauty is a moral test.
– Henry David Thoreau
The savage in man is never quite eradicated.
– Henry David Thoreau
The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest.
– Henry David Thoreau
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.
– Henry David Thoreau
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.
– Henry David Thoreau
There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.
– Henry David Thoreau
There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.
– Henry David Thoreau
There is no rule more invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspect.
– Henry David Thoreau
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.
– Henry David Thoreau
This world is but a canvas to our imagination.
– Henry David Thoreau
Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.
– Henry David Thoreau