Most people dread finding out when they come to die that they have never really lived. - Henry David Thoreau
To believe your own thought: To believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, that is genius. - Henry David Thoreau
Truth strikes us from behind and in the dark, as well as from before and in broad daylight. - Henry David Thoreau
There is no remedy for love but to love more. - Henry David Thoreau
The way by which you may get money almost without exception leads downward. - Henry David Thoreau
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. - Henry David Thoreau
I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. - Henry David Thoreau
Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul. - Henry David Thoreau
Do not lose hold of your dreams or aspirations. For if you do, you may still exist but you have ceased to live. - Henry David Thoreau
It is as hard to see one's self as to look backwards without turning around. - Henry David Thoreau
Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. - Henry David Thoreau
Man is the artificer of his own happiness. - Henry David Thoreau
Good poetry seems too simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy speech. - Henry David Thoreau
I derive no pleasure from talking with a young woman simply because she has regular features. - Henry David Thoreau
I'd rather sit alone on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion. - Henry David Thoreau
The question is not what you look at, but what you see. It is only necessary to behold the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair's breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance. - Henry David Thoreau
Those who, while they disapprove of the character and measures of a government, yield to it their allegiance and support are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most serious obstacles to reform. - Henry David Thoreau
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. - Henry David Thoreau
It is only when we forget our learning, do we begin to know. - Henry David Thoreau
We are more of the earth,Farther from heaven these days. - Henry David Thoreau
The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer. - Henry David Thoreau
He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate. - Henry David Thoreau
Our truest life is when we are in our dreams awake. - Henry David Thoreau
Many go fishing without knowing it is fish they are after. - Henry David Thoreau
I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn. - Henry David Thoreau
The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. - Henry David Thoreau
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. - Henry David Thoreau
What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. - Henry David Thoreau
A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend. - Henry David Thoreau
When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. - Henry David Thoreau
Le citoyen doit-il un seul instant, dans quelque mesure que ce soit, abandonner sa conscience au législateur ?(LA DÉSOBÉISSANCE CIVILE) - Henry David Thoreau
Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new. - Henry David Thoreau
Every man is the builder of a temple called his body. - Henry David Thoreau
Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day. - Henry David Thoreau
I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that 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
Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate. - Henry David Thoreau
You can not percieve beauty but with a serene mind. - Henry David Thoreau
Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each. - Henry David Thoreau
Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now. - Henry David Thoreau
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board. - Henry David Thoreau
Petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of reality. - Henry David Thoreau
There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone. - Henry David Thoreau
The only way to tell the truth is to speak with kindness. Only the words of a loving man can be heard - Henry David Thoreau
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. - Henry David Thoreau
I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake his neighbours up. - Henry David Thoreau
The only obligation which I have a right to assume, is to do at any time what I think right. - 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
Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout. - Henry David Thoreau
We are constantly invited to be what we are. - Henry David Thoreau
There is no remedy for love but to love more."- - Henry David Thoreau
Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves. - Henry David Thoreau
Thank God men cannot as yet fly and lay waste the sky as well as the earth! - Henry David Thoreau
Goodness is the only investment that never fails. - Henry David Thoreau
What people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. - Henry David Thoreau
In the long run, you hit only what you aim at: Therefore aim high. - Henry David Thoreau
I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion. - Henry David Thoreau
It is pleasant to have been to a place the way a river went. - Henry David Thoreau
I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor. - Henry David Thoreau
We falsely attribute to men a determined character - putting together all their yesterdays - and averaging them - we presume we know them. Pity the man who has character to support - it is worse than a large family - he is the silent poor indeed. - Henry David Thoreau
To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity and trust. - 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 sail, the play of its pulse so like our own lives: so thin and yet so full of life, so noiseless when it labors hardest, so noisy and impatient when least effective. - Henry David Thoreau
A sentence should be read as if its author, had he held a plough instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end. - Henry David Thoreau
He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise. - 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 finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly. - Henry David Thoreau
My friend is one... who take me for what I am. - Henry David Thoreau
But government in which the majority rule in all cases can not be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. - Henry David Thoreau
In the long run you only hit what you aim at. Therefore, though you should fail immediately, you had better aim at something high. - Henry David Thoreau
Under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. - Henry David Thoreau
One may discover a new side to his most intimate friend when for the first time he hears him speak in public. He will be stranger to him as he is more familiar to the audience. The longest intimacy could not foretell how he would behave then - Henry David Thoreau
To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, not even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. - Henry David Thoreau
Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? 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. - Henry David Thoreau
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity. - Henry David Thoreau
On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world. - Henry David Thoreau
Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? - Henry David Thoreau
To be awake is to be alive. - Henry David Thoreau
In wildness is the preservation of the world. - Henry David Thoreau
What men call good fellowship is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter which lie close together to keep each other warm. - Henry David Thoreau
I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad. - Henry David Thoreau
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. - Henry David Thoreau
What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook. - Henry David Thoreau
Men have become the tools of their tools. - Henry David Thoreau
Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them. - Henry David Thoreau
To regret deeply is to live afresh. - Henry David Thoreau
When some of my friends have asked me anxiously about their boys, whether they should let them hunt, I have answered yes-- remembering that it was one of the best parts of my education-- make them hunters. - Henry David Thoreau
ابدأ بقراءة أفضل الكتب، وإلا لن تجد الفرصة لقراءتهم أبداً - Henry David Thoreau
We hear and apprehend only what we already half know. - Henry David Thoreau
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book. - Henry David Thoreau
When a dog runs at you, whistle for him. - Henry David Thoreau
si elle (la loi) est d'une telle nature qu'elle fasse de vous l'agent de l'injustice vis-à-vis d'autrui alors je déclare qu'il faut enfreindre la loi - Henry David Thoreau
How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. - Henry David Thoreau
Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as apply to them. I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits. - Henry David Thoreau
Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something. - Henry David Thoreau
Most are engaged in business the greater part of their lives, because the soul abhors a vacuum and they have not discovered any continuous employment for man's nobler faculties. - Henry David Thoreau
I have lived some thirty years on this planet and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors. - Henry David Thoreau
Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without. - Henry David Thoreau
Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep. - Henry David Thoreau
It takes two to speak the truth - one to speak and another to hear. - Henry David Thoreau
The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready. - Henry David Thoreau
In solitude especialy do we begin to appreciate the advantage of living with someone who can think. - Henry David Thoreau
Voting for the right is doing nothing for it. - Henry David Thoreau
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. - Henry David Thoreau
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is in prison. - Henry David Thoreau
I stand in awe of my body. - Henry David Thoreau
The hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men. - Henry David Thoreau
Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end. - Henry David Thoreau
[Water is] the only drink for a wise man. - Henry David Thoreau
Go Confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined. - 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
All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy. - Henry David Thoreau
I have an immense appetite for solitude, like an infant for sleep, and if I don't get enough for this year, I shall cry all the next. - Henry David Thoreau
The question is not what you look at, but what you see. - Henry David Thoreau
It is not worth the while to let our imperfections disturb us always. - Henry David Thoreau
As if there were safety in stupidity alone. - Henry David Thoreau
If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will believe what they see. Let them see. - Henry David Thoreau
In dreams we see ourselves naked and acting our real characters, even more clearly than we see others awake. - Henry David Thoreau
Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around. - 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
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. - Henry David Thoreau
All good things are wild, and free. - Henry David Thoreau
It takes two to speak the truth--one to speak and the other to hear. - Henry David Thoreau
Most men cry better than they speak. You get more nurture out of them by pinching than addressing them. - Henry David Thoreau
Every blade in the field - Every leaf in the forest - lays down its life in its season as beautifully as it was taken up. - Henry David Thoreau
This curious world we inhabit is more wonderful than convenient; more beautiful than it is useful; it is more to be admired and enjoyed than used. - Henry David Thoreau
We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the filed, but not to describe human character. - Henry David Thoreau
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. - Henry David Thoreau
Cultivate the habit of early rising. It is unwise to keep the head long on a level with the feet. - Henry David Thoreau
I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things. - Henry David Thoreau
Be not simply good - be good for something. - Henry David Thoreau
One cannot too soon forget his errors and misdemeanors. - Henry David Thoreau
Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. what a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate. - Henry David Thoreau
Men have become the tools of their tools. Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul. 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
If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see. - Henry David Thoreau
Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something. - Henry David Thoreau
It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about? - Henry David Thoreau
The trees and shrubs rear white arms to the sky on every side; and where were walls and fences, we see forms stretching in frolic gambols across the dusky landscape, as if Nature had strewn her fresh designs over the fields by night as models for man's art. - Henry David Thoreau
Men are born to succeed, not to fail. - Henry David Thoreau
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler. - Henry David Thoreau
The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. - Henry David Thoreau
How sweet it would be to treat men and things, for an hour, for just what they are! - Henry David Thoreau
We cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun; he is no more humane, while his education has been sadly neglected. - Henry David Thoreau
It is characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things. - Henry David Thoreau
The light that puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. - Henry David Thoreau
Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake. - Henry David Thoreau
Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes. - Henry David Thoreau
That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest. - Henry David Thoreau
Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it. - Henry David Thoreau
Must be out-of-doors enough to get experience of wholesome reality, as a ballast to thought and sentiment. Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life - Henry David Thoreau
However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are the richest. - Henry David Thoreau
Dreams are the touchstones of our characters. - Henry David Thoreau
He who hears the rippling of rivers in these degenerate days will not utterly despair. - Henry David Thoreau
I will come to you, my friend, when I no longer need you. Then you will find a palace, not an almshouse. - Henry David Thoreau
Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it. - Henry David Thoreau
A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of any prince. - Henry David Thoreau
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 he hears, how ever measured or far away. - Henry David Thoreau
Heroes are often the most ordinary of men. - 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
In what concerns you much, do not think that you have companions: know that you are alone in the world. - Henry David Thoreau
The greatest art is to shape the quality of the day. - Henry David Thoreau
A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure. - Henry David Thoreau
If the day and the night are such that you greet them with with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, more elastic, more starry, more immortal--that is your success. - Henry David Thoreau
Be true to your work, your word, and your friend. - Henry David Thoreau
It is never too late to give up your prejudices. - Henry David Thoreau
It is not that we love to be alone, but that we love to soar, and when we do soar, the company grows thinner and thinner until there is none at all. …We are not the less to aim at the summits though the multitude does not ascend them. - Henry David Thoreau
I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. - Henry David Thoreau
It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things. - Henry David Thoreau
The perception of beauty is a moral test. - 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
Men are born to succeed, not fail. - Henry David Thoreau
Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business. - Henry David Thoreau
Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk. - Henry David Thoreau
Do what nobody else can do for you. Omit to do anything else. - Henry David Thoreau
There is more religion in men's science, than there is science in their religion. - Henry David Thoreau
I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. - Henry David Thoreau
We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success. - Henry David Thoreau
Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth. - Henry David Thoreau
Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! - Henry David Thoreau
Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine. - Henry David Thoreau
Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience. - Henry David Thoreau
I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestioned ability of a man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor. - Henry David Thoreau
Any fool can make a rule,and any fool will mind it. - Henry David Thoreau
We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy. - Henry David Thoreau
Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify. - Henry David Thoreau
The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way. - Henry David Thoreau
Say what you have to say, not what you ought. any truth is better than make-Believe! - Henry David Thoreau
Let everyone mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made. - Henry David Thoreau
It is never too late to give up our prejudices. - Henry David Thoreau
Water is the only drink for a wise man. - Henry David Thoreau
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it. - Henry David Thoreau
Things do not change; we change. - Henry David Thoreau
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. - Henry David Thoreau
We must have infinite faith in each other. If we have not, we must never let it leak out that we have not. - Henry David Thoreau
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone. - Henry David Thoreau
Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize the infinite extent of our relations. - Henry David Thoreau
None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm. - Henry David Thoreau