Quotes By Henry David Thoreau

To be admitted to Nature's hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push aside the curtain.

Front yards are not made to walk in, but, at most, through, and you could go in the back way.

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

The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?

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.

Faith never makes a confession.

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.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.

In the meanest are all the materials of manhood, only they are not rightly disposed.

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

None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.

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.

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

Where there is an observatory and a telescope, we expect that any eyes will see new worlds at once.

The fibers of all things have their tension and are strained like the strings of an instrument.

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

God reigns when we take a liberal view, when a liberal view is presented to us.

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

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

As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society.

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

Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends... Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve.

The universe is wider than our views of it.

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.

The heart is forever inexperienced.

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?

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.