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.
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined...
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 greatest tragedy in life is to spend your whole life fishing only to discover it was never fish that you were after.
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.
Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.
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.
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.
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.
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.
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.
Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.
All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong.
Behave so the aroma of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere.
Government never furthered any enterprise but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way.
Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.
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.
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.
Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.
You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.
The words which express our faith and piety are not definite; yet they are significant and fragrant like frankincense to superior natures.
As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind.
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.
