Quotes By Henry David Thoreau

There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.

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 would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.

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.

After the first blush of sin comes its indifference.

Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe.

The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth.

May we so love as never to have occasion to repent of our love!

The savage in man is never quite eradicated.

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

They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar.

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

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.

Books are to be distinguished by the grandeur of their topics even more than by the manner in which they are treated.

To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.

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.

We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.

Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.

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

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

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

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.

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

Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men.

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.

The bluebird carries the sky on his back.

Live the life you've dreamed.

Is the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man.

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