Henry David Thoreau Quotes

We are constantly invited to be who we are.

There will never be a really free and enlightened state until the state comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived.

March to the beat of your own drummer.

Sweep away the clutter of things that complicate our lives.

No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof.

This life is not for complaint, but for satisfaction.

O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it, for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment.

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.

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

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

Man is the artificer of his own happiness.

When I consider how, after sunset, the stars come out gradually in troops from behind the hills and woods, I confess that I could not have contrived a more curious and inspiring sight.

It is difficult to begin without borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit your fellowmen to have an interest in your enterprise.

The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.

While some men believe in the infinite, some ponds will be thought to be bottomless.

Nature, even when she is scant and thin outwardly, satisfies us still by the assurance of a certain generosity at the roots.

I was determined to know beans.

My profession is to be always on the alert to find God in nature, to know his lurking-places, to attend all the oratorios, the operas in nature.

Every child begins the world again.

Every sentence is the result of a long probation.

The biggest happiness is when at the end of the year you feel better than at the beginning

I felt a positive yearning toward one bush this afternoon. There was a match found for me at last. I fell in love with a shrub oak.

I have climbed several higher mountains without guide or path, and have found, as might be expected, that it takes only more time and patience commonly than to travel the smoothest highway.

You cannot hear music and noise at the same time.

Philosophy, having crept clinging to the rocks so far, puts out its feelers many ways in vain.

Thought is the sculptor who can create the person you want to be.

I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government

Nature refuses to sympathize with our sorrow. She seems not to have provided for, but by a thousand contrivances against it.

If the day and night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal - that is your success.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.

I have received no more than one or two letters in my life that were worth the postage.

'Tis healthy to be sick sometimes.

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

Not only must we be good, but we must also be good for something.

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.

I hear beyond the range of sound, I see beyond the range of sight, New earths and skies and seas around, And in my day the sun doth pale his light.

None can lead this life who are not almost amphibious.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and if I can only walk with sufficient carelessness I am sure to be filled.

The Universal Soul, as it is called, has an interest in the stacking of hay, the foddering of cattle, and the draining of peat-meadows.

When the leaves fall, the whole earth is a cemetery pleasant to walk in. I love to wander and muse over them in their graves. Here are no lying nor vain epitaphs.

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake.

A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.

I wished only to be set down in Canada, and take one honest walk there as I might in Concord woods of an afternoon.

Poetry is the only life got, the only work done, the only pure product and free labor of man, performed only when he has put all the world under his feet, and conquered the last of his foes.

How prompt we are to satisfy the hunger and thirst of our bodies; how slow to satisfy the hunger and thirst of our souls!

The Mississippi, the Ganges, and the Nile,... the Rocky Mountains, the Himmaleh, and Mountains of the Moon, have a kind of personal importance in the annals of the world.

As for the dispute about solitude and society, any comparison is impertinent. It is an idling down on the plane at the base of a mountain, instead of climbing steadily to its top.

How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had a seedtime of character?

Wherever you have planted a seed, I am prepared to expect wonders.

A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener.