Henry David Thoreau Quotes and Sayings (3)
Quotes by 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

Related topics: Life Human-Nature Psychology Intention Repetition Perseverance

Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful
than Thor with his hammer.
The one melts, the other breaks into pieces.
- Henry David Thoreau

A man's interest in a single bluebird
is worth more than a complete but dry list
of the fauna and flora of a town.
- 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

If misery loves company, misery has company enough.
- Henry David Thoreau

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

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil
to one who is striking at the root.
- Henry David Thoreau

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

Where there is an observatory and a telescope,
we expect that any eyes will see new worlds at once.
- Henry David Thoreau

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

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

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

In my afternoon walk I would fain forget
all my morning occupations and my obligations to society.
- 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

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

Those whom we can love, we can hate;
to others we are indifferent.
- Henry David Thoreau

There are certain pursuits which,
if not wholly poetic and true,
do at least suggest a nobler and finer
relation to nature than we know.
The keeping of bees, for instance.
- Henry David Thoreau

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

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

All men are children, and of one family.
The same tale sends them all to bed,
and wakes them in the morning.
- Henry David Thoreau

Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.
- Henry David Thoreau

All perception of truth
is the detection of an analogy;
we reason from our hands to our head.
- 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 cost of a thing is the amount
of what I will call life
which is required to be exchanged for it,
immediately or in the long run.
- Henry David Thoreau

Read the best books first,
or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
- 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

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

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

An unclean person is universally a slothful one.
- 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

We are not what we are,
nor do we treat or esteem each other for such,
but for what we are capable of being.
- 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

I never found a companion that was
so companionable as solitude.
- 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 trouble yourself much
to get new things, whether clothes or friends...
Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.
- Henry David Thoreau

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

Faith never makes a confession.
- Henry David Thoreau

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

I have never found a companion that was
so companionable as solitude.
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

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

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

After the first blush of sin, comes its indifference.
- Henry David Thoreau

Nothing goes by luck in composition.
It allows of no tricks.
The best you can write will be the best you are.
- Henry David Thoreau

The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth.
- Henry David Thoreau

There never was and is not likely soon to be
a nation of philosophers,
nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be.
- 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

I was more independent than any farmer in Concord,
for I was not anchored to a house or farm,
but could follow the bent of my genius,
which is a very crooked one, every moment.
- Henry David Thoreau

To affect the quality of the day,
that is the highest of arts.
- Henry David Thoreau

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us.
Only that day dawns to which we are awake.
There is more day to dawn.
The sun is but a morning star.
- Henry David Thoreau

Men have become the tools of their tools.
- Henry David Thoreau

'Tis healthy to be sick sometimes.
- Henry David Thoreau

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious
as to have friends at a distance;
they make the latitudes and the longitudes.
- Henry David Thoreau

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly,
the true place for a just man is also a prison.
- Henry David Thoreau

The lawyer's truth is not Truth,
but consistency or a consistent expediency.
- Henry David Thoreau

How does it become a man to behave
towards the American government today?
I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.
- Henry David Thoreau

In the meanest are all the materials of manhood,
only they are not rightly disposed.
- Henry David Thoreau

How vain it is to sit down to write
when you have not stood up to live.
- Henry David Thoreau

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty.
The obedient must be slaves.
- Henry David Thoreau

We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect.
- Henry David Thoreau

Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste
the sky as well as the earth.
- Henry David Thoreau

It is too late to be studying Hebrew;
it is more important to understand
even the slang of to-day.
- 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

They can do without architecture
who have no olives nor wines in the cellar.
- Henry David Thoreau

I have seen how the foundations of the world are laid,
and I have not the least doubt that it will stand a good while.
- Henry David Thoreau

Some are reputed sick and some are not.
It often happens that the sicker man
is the nurse to the sounder.
- Henry David Thoreau

I have thought there was some advantage even in death,
by which we mingle with the herd of common 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

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

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

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