Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. – Henry David Thoreau
There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature. – Henry David Thoreau
I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. – 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
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
There is no remedy for love but to love more. – Henry David Thoreau
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
It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. – Henry David Thoreau
It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature. – Henry David Thoreau
The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend. – Henry David Thoreau
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all. – Henry David Thoreau
We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. – Henry David Thoreau
If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. – 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
Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant? – Henry David Thoreau
Be not simply good – be good for something. – Henry David Thoreau
To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. – Henry David Thoreau
Friends… they cherish one another’s hopes. They are kind to one another’s dreams. – Henry David Thoreau
‘Tis healthy to be sick sometimes. – Henry David Thoreau
Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around. – Henry David Thoreau
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads. – Henry David Thoreau
It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see. – 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
It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things. – Henry David Thoreau
Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh. – Henry David Thoreau
Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake. – Henry David Thoreau
True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance. – Henry David Thoreau
That government is best which governs least. – Henry David Thoreau
Not only must we be good, but we must also be good for something. – Henry David Thoreau
The perception of beauty is a moral test. – Henry David Thoreau
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it. – 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
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. – 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
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
While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings. – Henry David Thoreau
There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself. – Henry David Thoreau
A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend. – Henry David Thoreau
Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? – 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
Things do not change; we change. – 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
Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve. – Henry David Thoreau
The heart is forever inexperienced. – Henry David Thoreau
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. – 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
Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still. – Henry David Thoreau
To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea. – Henry David Thoreau
It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know. – Henry David Thoreau
Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without. – Henry David Thoreau
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone. – 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 price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it. – Henry David Thoreau
Dreams are the touchstones of our character. – Henry David Thoreau
The language of friendship is not words but meanings. – 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
Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth. – Henry David Thoreau
The bluebird carries the sky on his back. – Henry David Thoreau
Alas! how little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape! – Henry David Thoreau
Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe. – Henry David Thoreau
Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after. – Henry David Thoreau
Goodness is the only investment that never fails. – Henry David Thoreau
In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society. – Henry David Thoreau
All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man. – Henry David Thoreau
It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive. – 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
This world is but a canvas to our imagination. – Henry David Thoreau
As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives. – Henry David Thoreau
Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling. – Henry David Thoreau
Men have become the tools of their tools. – Henry David Thoreau
Wealth is the ability to fully experience life. – Henry David Thoreau
Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence. – Henry David Thoreau
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. – Henry David Thoreau
They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar. – Henry David Thoreau
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. – Henry David Thoreau
I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. – Henry David Thoreau
What is called genius is the abundance of life and health. – Henry David Thoreau
As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society. – Henry David Thoreau
Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain. – Henry David Thoreau
Men are born to succeed, not to fail. – Henry David Thoreau
Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself. – Henry David Thoreau
The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness. – Henry David Thoreau
