Henry David Thoreau Quotes and Sayings (2)
Quotes by 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

If a man does not keep pace with his companions,
perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
- Henry David Thoreau

Related topics: Values Choice Honor Bold Purpose Life-Purpose

Things do not change; we change.
- 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 foundations under them.
- Henry David Thoreau

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new
continents and worlds within you,
opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.
- Henry David Thoreau

I have found that hollow,
which even I had relied on for solid.
- 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

Friends... they cherish one another's hopes.
They are kind to one another's dreams.
- Henry David Thoreau

We know but a few men, a great many coats and breeches.
- 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

Every generation laughs at the old fashions,
but follows religiously the new.
- Henry David Thoreau

Dreams are the touchstones of our character.
- 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 bluebird carries the sky on his back.
- Henry David Thoreau

The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.
- Henry David Thoreau

This world is but a canvas to our imagination.
- Henry David Thoreau

There are old heads in the world
who cannot help me by their example or advice
to live worthily and satisfactorily to myself;
but I believe that it is in my power
to elevate myself this very hour
above the common level of my life.
- Henry David Thoreau

The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?
- Henry David Thoreau

If you advance confidently in the direction of your dreams
and endeavor to leave the life which you have imagined,
you will you will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
- Henry David Thoreau

Through our own recovered innocence
we discern the innocence of our neighbors.
- Henry David Thoreau

Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify.
- Henry David Thoreau

Not until we are lost
do we begin to understand ourselves.
- Henry David Thoreau

Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.
- 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

Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl:
it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.
- Henry David Thoreau

Goodness is the only investment that never fails.
- Henry David Thoreau

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.
- Henry David Thoreau

What is called genius is the
abundance of life and health.
- Henry David Thoreau

Front yards are not made to walk in, but, at most, through,
and you could go in the back way.
- Henry David Thoreau

The language of Friendship is not words, but meanings.
It is an intelligence above language.
- 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

I have learned, that if one advances confidently
in the direction of his dreams,
and endeavors to live the life he has imagined,
he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
- Henry David Thoreau

How could youths better learn to live
than by at once trying the experiment of living?
- Henry David Thoreau

Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.
- Henry David Thoreau

All endeavor calls for the ability
to tramp the last mile,
shape the last plan, endure the last hours toil.
The fight to the finish spirit is the one...
characteristic we must posses
if we are to face the future as finishers.
- Henry David Thoreau

I have a great deal of company in the house,
especially in the morning when nobody calls.
- 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

God reigns when we take a liberal view.
- Henry David Thoreau

If a man constantly aspires is he not elevated?
- Henry David Thoreau

How can any man be weak who dares to be at all?
- Henry David Thoreau

I love to be alone.
I never found the companion
that was so companionable as solitude.
- Henry David Thoreau

Justice is sweet and musical; but injustice is harsh and discordant.
- Henry David Thoreau

Every people have gods to suit their circumstances.
- Henry David Thoreau

There is but one stage for the peasant and the actor.
- Henry David Thoreau

Instead of noblemen,
let us have noble villages of men.
- Henry David Thoreau

If I seem to boast more than is becoming,
my excuse is that I brag
for humanity rather than for myself.
- Henry David Thoreau

It is better to have your head in the clouds,
and know where you are...
than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them,
and think that you are in paradise.
- Henry David Thoreau

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity;
so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.
- Henry David Thoreau

If you can speak what you will never hear,
if you can write what you will never read,
you have done rare things.
- 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.
- 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

The fibers of all things have their tension
and are strained like the strings of an instrument.
- Henry David Thoreau

Do what nobody else can do for you.
Omit to do anything else.
- Henry David Thoreau

The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely.
You must be calm before you can utter oracles.
- Henry David Thoreau

It takes two to speak the truth:
one to speak, and another to hear.
- Henry David Thoreau

In human intercourse the tragedy begins,
not when there is misunderstanding about words,
but when silence is not understood.
- 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

Do not worry if you have built your castles in the air.
They are where they should be.
Now put the foundations under them.
- Henry David Thoreau

I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's
most effective criticism until you provoke him.
Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.
- Henry David Thoreau

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it.
I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint.
What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.
- Henry David Thoreau

Books are the treasured wealth of the world
and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.
- Henry David Thoreau

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
- Henry David Thoreau

How many things there are concerning which we might
well deliberate whether we had better know them.
- Henry David Thoreau

The smallest seed of faith is better than
the largest fruit of happiness.
- Henry David Thoreau

Truth is always in harmony with herself,
and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice
that may consist with wrong-doing.
- Henry David Thoreau

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
- Henry David Thoreau

A man is rich in proportion to
the number of things he can afford to let alone.
- Henry David Thoreau

There is no rule more invariable than that
we are paid for our suspicions
by finding what we suspect.
- Henry David Thoreau

The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest.
- Henry David Thoreau

True friendship can afford true knowledge.
It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.
- 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

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth?
Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.
- Henry David Thoreau

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