Henry David Thoreau Quotes - Page 2

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
Events circumstances etc. have their origin in ourselves. They spring from seeds which we have sown.
Henry David Thoreau
What a man thinks of himself that is what determines or rather indicates his fate.
Henry David Thoreau
We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect.
Henry David Thoreau
The faultfinder will find faults even in paradise.
Henry David Thoreau
Politics is the gizzard of society full of gut and gravel.
Henry David Thoreau
Colour which is the poet's wealth is so expensive that most take to mere outline sketches and become men of science.
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
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.
Henry David Thoreau
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
Henry David Thoreau
Gather ye rose-buds while ye may Old time is still a-flying. And this same flower that smiles today Tomorrow will be dying.
Henry David Thoreau
The eye is the jewel of the body.
Henry David Thoreau
Gnaw your own bone gnaw at it bury it unearth it gnaw it still.
Henry David Thoreau
I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
Henry David Thoreau
When I would recreate myself I seek the darkest wood the thickest and most interminable and to the citizen most dismal swamp. I enter a swamp as a sacred place - a sanctum sanctorum. There is the strength the marrow of Nature.
Henry David Thoreau
For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms and did my duty faithfully though I never received one cent for it.
Henry David Thoreau
The bluebird carries the sky on his back.
Henry David Thoreau
The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.
Henry David Thoreau
I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech tree or a yellow birch or an old acquaintance among the pines.
Henry David Thoreau
Only that day dawns to which we are awake.
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
You cannot receive a shock unless you have an electric affinity for that which shocks you.
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
What is morality but immemorial custom? Conscience is the chief of conservatives.
Henry David Thoreau
Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.
Henry David Thoreau
A man is rich in proportion to the things he can afford to let alone.
Henry David Thoreau
Men have become the tools of their tools.
Henry David Thoreau
I have received no more than one or two letters in my life that were worth the postage.
Henry David Thoreau
To know that we know what we know and that we do not know what we do not know that is true knowledge.
Henry David Thoreau
Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbours.
Henry David Thoreau
I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than to be crowded on a velvet cushion.
Henry David Thoreau
Goodness is the only investment that never fails.
Henry David Thoreau
Man is the artificer of his own happiness.
Henry David Thoreau
If I knew ... 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
It's only by forgetting yourself that you draw near to God.
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
In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore though they should fall immediately they had better aim at something high.
Henry David Thoreau
Not only must we be good but we must also be good for something.
Henry David Thoreau
The language of friendship is not words but meanings.
Henry David Thoreau
How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual friends that we may go and meet their ideal cousins.
Henry David Thoreau
There is not so good an understanding between any two but the exposure by the one of a serious fault in the other will produce a misunderstanding in proportion to its heinousness.
Henry David Thoreau
A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.
Henry David Thoreau
That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
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 richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in Paradise. Love your life.
Henry David Thoreau
Nothing is so much to be feared as fear.
Henry David Thoreau
Every generation laughs at the old fashions but religiously follows the new.
Henry David Thoreau
Friends will not only live in harmony but in melody.
Henry David Thoreau
The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend.
Henry David Thoreau
We must have infinite faith in each other.
Henry David Thoreau
Experience is in the fingers and the head. The heart is inexperienced.
Henry David Thoreau
Some circumstantial evidence is very strong as when you find a trout in the milk.
Henry David Thoreau
None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
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
Water is the only drink for a wise man.
Henry David Thoreau
Where there is a brave man in the thickest of the fight there is the post of honor.
Henry David Thoreau
The frontiers are not east or west north or south but wherever a man fronts a fact.
Henry David Thoreau
Compliments and flattery oftenest excite my contempt by the pretension they imply for who is he that assumes to flatter me? To compliment often implies an assumption of superiority in the complimenter. It is in fact a subtle detraction.
Henry David Thoreau
Things do not change we change.
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
What recommends commerce to me is its enterprise and bravery. It does not clasp its hands and pray to Jupiter.
Henry David Thoreau