Top 140 Henry David Thoreau Quotes

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It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple t

It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.
Henry David Thoreau
I am sorry to think that you do not get a man’s most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.
Henry David Thoreau
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.
Henry David Thoreau
The lawyer’s truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.
Henry David Thoreau
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.
Henry David Thoreau
All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.
Henry David Thoreau
It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.
Henry David Thoreau
Men are born to succeed, not to fail.
Henry David Thoreau
It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.
Henry David Thoreau
There is no remedy for love but to love more.
Henry David Thoreau
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.
Henry David Thoreau
The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.
Henry David Thoreau
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
Henry David Thoreau
Alas! how little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape!
Henry David Thoreau
I have the habit of attention to such excess, that my senses get no rest – but suffer from a constant strain.
Henry David Thoreau
Goodness is the only investment that never fails.
Henry David Thoreau
In wildness is the preservation of the world.
Henry David Thoreau
Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them.
Henry David Thoreau
Only he is successful in his business who makes that pursuit which affords him the highest pleasure sustain him.
Henry David Thoreau
The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.
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.
Henry David Thoreau
May we so love as never to have occasion to repent of our love!
Henry David Thoreau
Only that day dawns to which we are awake.
Henry David Thoreau
There never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be.
Henry David Thoreau
True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.
Henry David Thoreau
The universe is wider than our views of it.
Henry David Thoreau
Simplify, simplify.
Henry David Thoreau
An unclean person is universally a slothful one.
Henry David Thoreau
Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.
Henry David Thoreau
What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.
Henry David Thoreau
There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.
Henry David Thoreau
The life which men praise and regard as successful is b

The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?
Henry David Thoreau
If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.
Henry David Thoreau
It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
Henry David Thoreau
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.
Henry David Thoreau
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
Henry David Thoreau
I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls.
Henry David Thoreau
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
Henry David Thoreau
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.
Henry David Thoreau
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.
Henry David Thoreau
Justice is sweet and musical; but injustice is harsh and discordant.
Henry David Thoreau
Our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify.
Henry David Thoreau
Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.
Henry David Thoreau
It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.
Henry David Thoreau
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.
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
The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest.
Henry David Thoreau
If a man constantly aspires is he not elevated?
Henry David Thoreau
There is no just and serene criticism as yet.
Henry David Thoreau
It is too late to be studying Hebrew; it is more important to understand even the slang of today.
Henry David Thoreau
What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.
Henry David Thoreau
Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?
Henry David Thoreau
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
Henry David Thoreau
It is what a man thinks of himself that really determines his fate.
Henry David Thoreau
To be awake is to be alive.
Henry David Thoreau
I have seen how the foundations of the world are laid, and I have not the least doubt that it will stand a good while.
Henry David Thoreau
In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.
Henry David Thoreau
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.
Henry David Thoreau
In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, they had better aim at something high.
Henry David Thoreau
If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself.
Henry David Thoreau
God reigns when we take a liberal view, when a liberal view is presented to us.
Henry David Thoreau
What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?
Henry David Thoreau
The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest f

The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness.
Henry David Thoreau
Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.
Henry David Thoreau
I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.
Henry David Thoreau
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.
Henry David Thoreau
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?
Henry David Thoreau
Being is the great explainer.
Henry David Thoreau
What is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.
Henry David Thoreau
It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious.
Henry David Thoreau
To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.
Henry David Thoreau
You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.
Henry David Thoreau
It is never too late to give up our prejudices.
Henry David Thoreau
Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.
Henry David Thoreau
It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.
Henry David Thoreau
The law will never make a man free; it is men who have got to make the law free.
Henry David Thoreau
How sweet is the perception of a new natural fact!
Henry David Thoreau
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.
Henry David Thoreau
Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.
Henry David Thoreau
There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.
Henry David Thoreau
Truths and roses have thorns about them.
Henry David Thoreau
Men have become the tools of their tools.
Henry David Thoreau
Before printing was discovered, a century was equal to a thousand years.
Henry David Thoreau
They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar.
Henry David Thoreau
Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.
Henry David Thoreau
Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.
Henry David Thoreau
Front yards are not made to walk in, but, at most, through, and you could go in the back way.
Henry David Thoreau
The savage in man is never quite eradicated.
Henry David Thoreau
Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.
Henry David Thoreau
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.
Henry David Thoreau
Things do not change; we change.
Henry David Thoreau
Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other breaks into pieces.
Henry David Thoreau