Henry David Thoreau
American essayist and naturalist, 1817-1862
74 quotes.
Quotes by Henry David Thoreau
- A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.
- A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.
- A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
- Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one.
- Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features; any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.
- 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.
- Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.
- Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.
- Be yourself- not your idea of what you think somebody else's idea of yourself should be.
- Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?
- 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.
- Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.
- Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.
- Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined.
- He who goes alone may start to-day; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.
- How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had a seed-time of character?
- How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live!
- However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names.
- Humility, like darkness, reveals the heavenly lights.
- I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely; as the pursuits of the simpler nations are still the sports of the more artificial.
- I believe that the mind can be profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality.
- I cannot make my days longer so I strive to make them better.
- If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
- I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.
- 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.
- I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well.
- 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.
- If the day and the 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.
- In proportion as one simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.
- In the long run men hit only what they aim at.
- It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?
- It is the slowest pulsation which is the most vital. The hero will then know how to wait, as well as to make haste. All good abides with him who waiteth wisely.
- It takes two to speak truth--one to speak and another to hear.
- It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.
- Let nothing come between you and the light.
- Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the rails.
- Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.