Henry David Thoreau Quotes

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.

In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.

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

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

Men are born to succeed, not to fail.

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.

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.

It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

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

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.

It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.

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

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

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

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

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

Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed… Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.

It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.

How does it become a man to behave towards the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.

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

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.

What is once well done is done forever.

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?

‚Tis healthy to be sick sometimes.

We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man’s features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.

It is what a man thinks of himself that really determines his fate.

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

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

Every day or two, I strolled to the village to hear some of the gossip which is incessantly going on there, circulating either from mouth to mouth, or from newspaper to newspaper, and which, taken in homeopathic doses, was really as refreshing in its way as the rustle of leaves and the peeping of frogs.

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.

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.

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.

In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, they had better aim at something high.

If misery loves company, misery has company enough.

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end.

The lawyer’s truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.

There is one consolation in being sick; and that is the possibility that you may recover to a better state than you were ever in before.

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.

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?

True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.

We are not what we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for what we are capable of being.

The savage in man is never quite eradicated.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all that was not life.

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.

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

The law will never make a man free; it is men who have got to make the law free.

It is never too late to give up our prejudices.

We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.

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

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.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.

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. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.

We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect.

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.

To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.

Justice is sweet and musical; but injustice is harsh and discordant.

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.

We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New, but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.

If an injustice requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the government machine.