Henry David Thoreau Quotes

It's the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us. The question is not what you look at but what you see.

Simplify your life. Don't waste the years struggling for things that are unimportant. Don't burden yourself with possessions. Keep your needs and wants simple and enjoy what you have. Don't destroy your peace of mind by looking back, worrying about the past. Live in the present. Simplify!

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined...

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.

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

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

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

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

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.

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.

The only people who ever get anyplace interesting are the people who get lost.

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

I love Nature partly because she is not man, but a retreat from him. None of his institutions control or pervade her. There a different kind of right prevails. In her midst I can be glad with an entire gladness. If this world were all man, I could not stretch myself, I should lose all hope. He is constraint, she is freedom to me. He makes me wish for another world. She makes me content with this.

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 which he hears, however measured or far away.

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.

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.

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.

An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.

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

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

Perfect sincerity and transparency make a great part of beauty, as in dewdrops, lakes, and diamonds.

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.

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

When it's time to die, let us not discover that we have never lived.

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.

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

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.

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

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

City life is millions of people being lonesome together.

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

It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are... than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.

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.

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.

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. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.

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

When we bring what is within out into the world, miracles happen.

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent.

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

Nature doth thus kindly heal every wound. By the mediation of a thousand little mosses and fungi, the most unsightly objects become radiant of beauty. There seem to be two sides of this world, presented us at different times, as we see things in growth or dissolution, in life or death. And seen with the eye of the poet, as God sees them, all things are alive and beautiful.

The devil finds work for idle hands.

Behave so the aroma of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere.

All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong.

Government never furthered any enterprise but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way.

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

The fire is the main comfort of the camp, whether in summer or winter, and is about as ample at one season as at another. It is as well for cheerfulness as for warmth and dryness.

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.

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

The bluebird carries the sky on his back.