Memorable Quotes and quotations from Henry David ThoreauHenry David Thoreau US Transcendentalist author (1817 - 1862)Henry David Thoreau - simplify Simplify - Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. 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. Henry David Thoreau - - 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. Henry David Thoreau - Walking (1862) - In wildness is the preservation of the world. Henry David Thoreau - - 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 - "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. Henry David Thoreau - - In wilderness is the preservation of the world. Henry David Thoreau - - Be not simply good - be good for something. Henry David Thoreau - - 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. Henry David Thoreau - Journal, July 25, 1839 - There is no remedy for love but to love more. Henry David Thoreau - book - The hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men. 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. Henry David Thoreau - - To regret deeply is to live afresh. Henry David Thoreau - - Cultivate the habit of early rising. It is unwise to keep the head long on a level with the feet. 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. Henry David Thoreau - - It is never too late to give up your prejudices. Henry David Thoreau - - What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us. Henry David Thoreau - - Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it. Henry David Thoreau - Walden, Economy. - I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Henry David Thoreau - - Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it. Henry David Thoreau - - I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestioned ability of a man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor. Henry David Thoreau - - Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something. Henry David Thoreau - "Walden", 1854 - The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. Henry David Thoreau - - Water is the only drink for a wise man. Henry David Thoreau - - As if there were safety in stupidity alone. Henry David Thoreau - Walden - Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes. 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 a success unexpected in common hours. 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 - Walden: Higher Laws, 1854 - Goodness is the only investment that never fails. Henry David Thoreau - - As if you could kill time without injuring eternity. Henry David Thoreau - - In solitude especialy do we begin to appreciate the advantage of living with someone who can think. Henry David Thoreau - - All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy. Henry David Thoreau - - It is characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things. Henry David Thoreau - - Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is in prison. Henry David Thoreau - - Most people dread finding out when they come to die that they have never really lived. Henry David Thoreau - - A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of any prince. Henry David Thoreau - Journal, January 21, 1838 - Man is the artificer of his own happiness. 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 - - A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend. 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. Henry David Thoreau - - Men have become the tools of their tools Henry David Thoreau - - Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around. Henry David Thoreau - - 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. Henry David Thoreau - Vol. 2, p.318 Houghton Mifflin - Do what nobody else can do for you. Omit to do anything else. Henry David Thoreau - - My friend is one... who take me for what I am. Henry David Thoreau - "Walden", 1854 - Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new. 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. Henry David Thoreau - - 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. Henry David Thoreau - "An Essay on Civil Disobedience," 1849. - Voting for the right is doing nothing for it. Henry David Thoreau - - That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest. Henry David Thoreau - - Our truest life is when we are in our dreams awake. Henry David Thoreau - - If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see. Henry David Thoreau - - Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk. Henry David Thoreau - Simplify Simplify - How sweet it would be to treat men and things, for an hour, for just what they are! 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 - Wednesday, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers - Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without. Henry David Thoreau - - 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. Henry David Thoreau - O Magazine, May 2004 - Every man is the builder of a temple called his body. 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. Henry David Thoreau - - 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. Henry David Thoreau - - 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. Henry David Thoreau - - Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it. 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. Henry David Thoreau - - We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy. Henry David Thoreau - - All good things are wild, and free. Henry David Thoreau - - In what concerns you much, do not think that you have companions: know that you are alone in the world. Henry David Thoreau - - Heroes are often the most ordinary of men. 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. God will see that you do want society. Henry David Thoreau - - Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something. Henry David Thoreau - - Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. Henry David Thoreau - - 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 - - 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. Henry David Thoreau - - Men have become the tools of their tools. Henry David Thoreau - - I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestioned ability of a man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor. Henry David Thoreau - - 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 - - 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. 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. 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 - in Walden, "Economy" - What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. 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 - - As if you could kill time without injuring eternity. Henry David Thoreau - - How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book. Henry David Thoreau - - 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 - "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. Henry David Thoreau - Walden: Economy, 1854 - Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them. Henry David Thoreau - - 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. Henry David Thoreau - - We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the filed, but not to describe human character. Henry David Thoreau - - 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) - 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 - - Be true to your work, your word, and your friend. 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. Henry David Thoreau - - Do not lose hold of your dreams or aspirations. For if you do, you may still exist but you have ceased to live. Henry David Thoreau - - Thank God men cannot as yet fly and lay waste the sky as well as the earth! 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 - - Be true to your work, your word, and your friend. Henry David Thoreau - - Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify. Henry David Thoreau - - 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 (1970) - Things do not change; we change. Henry David Thoreau - - It is pleasant to have been to a place the way a river went. Henry David Thoreau - - In dreams we see ourselves naked and acting our real characters, even more clearly than we see others awake. Henry David Thoreau - - Men are born to succeed, not fail. Henry David Thoreau - Simplify Simplify - Say what you have to say, not what you ought. any truth is better than make-Believe! Henry David Thoreau - - Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine. Henry David Thoreau - - Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it. Henry David Thoreau - - 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 - - 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 - - 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 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 - - There is no remedy for love but to love more. 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 - - The way by which you may get money almost without exception leads downward. Henry David Thoreau - - How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. Henry David Thoreau - - 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 - - It takes two to speak the truth--one to speak and the other to hear. Henry David Thoreau - - 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. 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 a success unexpected in common hours. Henry David Thoreau - - How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. Henry David Thoreau - "Resistance to Civil Government" - I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Henry David Thoreau - Jan. 3, 1861 - Thank God men cannot as yet fly and lay waste the sky as well as the earth. Henry David Thoreau - - 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 - - A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone. Henry David Thoreau - - In the long run, you hit only what you aim at: Therefore aim high. Henry David Thoreau - - I derive no pleasure from talking with a young woman simply because she has regular features. Henry David Thoreau - - What men call good fellowship is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter which lie close together to keep each other warm. Henry David Thoreau - - We must have infinite faith in each other. If we have not, we must never let it leak out that we have not. Henry David Thoreau - - 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. Henry David Thoreau - - What people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Henry David Thoreau - Simplify simplify - Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul. Henry David Thoreau - - 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 - - [Water is] the only drink for a wise man. Henry David Thoreau - Walden - Petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of reality. Henry David Thoreau - - I stand in awe of my body. Henry David Thoreau - ? - Many go fishing without knowing it is fish they are after. Henry David Thoreau - - 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. |
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