Henry David Thoreau was born on July 12, 1817, in Concord, Massachusetts, United States. He was an American poet, essayist, philosopher, and naturalist. His achievements include authoring seminal works like Walden and Civil Disobedience, pioneering modern environmentalism through his meticulous nature observations, influencing civil rights leaders with his philosophy of nonviolent resistance, and contributing to American Transcendentalism. May these Henry David Thoreau quotes and sayings offer you insights that will serve as inspiration for whatever your plans and goals in life are.
1. “Things do not change; we change.” – Henry David Thoreau
2. “Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.” – Henry David Thoreau
3. “I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.” – Henry David Thoreau
4. “I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that 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
5. “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
6. “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.” – Henry David Thoreau
7. “We are constantly invited to be what we are.” – Henry David Thoreau
8. “Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.” – Henry David Thoreau
9. “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.” – Henry David Thoreau
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10. “Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” – Henry David Thoreau
11. “When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality.” – Henry David Thoreau
12. “The question is not what you look at, but what you see.” – Henry David Thoreau
13. “Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.” – Henry David Thoreau
14. “It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?” – Henry David Thoreau
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15. “If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man.” – Henry David Thoreau
16. “Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.” – Henry David Thoreau
17. “You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.” – Henry David Thoreau
18. “I can alter my life by altering my attitude. He who would have nothing to do with thorns must never attempt to gather flowers.” – Henry David Thoreau
19. “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 you are in paradise.” – Henry David Thoreau
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20. “The language of friendship is not words, but meanings.” – Henry David Thoreau
21. “All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be.” – Henry David Thoreau
22. “I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.” – Henry David Thoreau
23. “Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?” – Henry David Thoreau
24. “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 he hears, however measured or far away.” – Henry David Thoreau
-min.jpg "Famous quotes and sayings by Henry David Thoreau")
25. “That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.” – Henry David Thoreau
26. “Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.” – Henry David Thoreau
27. “Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then.” – Henry David Thoreau
28. “All good things are wild and free.” – Henry David Thoreau
29. “An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.” – Henry David Thoreau
30. “The path of least resistance leads to crooked rivers and crooked men.” – Henry David Thoreau
More Best Inspirational Henry David Thoreau Life Quotes
31. “In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.” – Henry David Thoreau
32. “Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.” – Henry David Thoreau
33. “This world is but canvas to our imaginations.” – Henry David Thoreau
34. “Amid a world of noisy, shallow actors it is noble to stand aside and say, I will simply be.” – Henry David Thoreau
35. “Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.” – Henry David Thoreau
36. “I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.” – Henry David Thoreau
37. “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
38. “We are born as innocents. We are polluted by advice.” – Henry David Thoreau
39. “A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts. We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us.” – Henry David Thoreau
40. “The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.” – Henry David Thoreau
41. “It is never too late to give up your prejudices.” – Henry David Thoreau
42. “Men are born to succeed, not to fail.” – Henry David Thoreau
43. “What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.” – Henry David Thoreau
44. “I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.” – Henry David Thoreau
45. “It is not worth the while to let our imperfections disturb us always.” – Henry David Thoreau
46. “To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake.” – Henry David Thoreau
47. “There is no remedy for love but to love more.” – Henry David Thoreau
48. “Be resolutely and faithfully what you are; be humbly what you aspire to be.” – Henry David Thoreau
49. “Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.” – Henry David Thoreau
50. “It takes two to speak the truth - one to speak and another to hear.” – Henry David Thoreau
51. “In the long run men only hit what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high.” – Henry David Thoreau
52. “All change is a miracle to contemplate, but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.” – Henry David Thoreau
53. “There are many fine things we cannot say if we have to shout.” – Henry David Thoreau
54. “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” – Henry David Thoreau
55. “There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.” – Henry David Thoreau
56. “Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.” – Henry David Thoreau
57. “It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.” – Henry David Thoreau
58. “The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. I have no wealth to bestow on him. If he knows that I am happy in loving him, he will want no other reward.” – Henry David Thoreau
59. “What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.” – Henry David Thoreau
60. “The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.” – Henry David Thoreau
61. “Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify!” – Henry David Thoreau
62. “I make myself rich by making my wants few.” – Henry David Thoreau
63. “In wildness is the preservation of the world.” – Henry David Thoreau
64. “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” – Henry David Thoreau
65. “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” – Henry David Thoreau
66. “Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.” – Henry David Thoreau
67. “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.” – Henry David Thoreau
68. “Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.” – Henry David Thoreau
69. “Man is the artificer of his own happiness.” – Henry David Thoreau
70. “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
71. “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
72. “Give me for my friends and neighbors wild men, not tame ones. The wildness of the savage is but a faint symbol of the awful ferity with which good men and lovers meet.” – Henry David Thoreau
73. “When it is time to die, let us not discover that we have never lived.” – Henry David Thoreau
74. “The biggest happiness is when at the end of the year you feel better than at the beginning.” – Henry David Thoreau
75. “Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps.” – Henry David Thoreau
76. “Death is beautiful when seen to be a law, and not an accident. It is as common as life.” – Henry David Thoreau
77. “Nature will bear the closest inspection; she invites us to lay our eye level with the smallest leaf.” – Henry David Thoreau
78. “Every blade in the field—every leaf in the forest—lays down its life in its season as beautifully as it was taken up.” – Henry David Thoreau
79. “A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.” – Henry David Thoreau
80. “There is a love of wild nature in everybody.” – Henry David Thoreau
81. “What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?” – Henry David Thoreau
82. “Time spent amongst trees is never wasted time.” – Henry David Thoreau
83. “The earth is a living thing. Mountains speak, trees sing, lakes can think, pebbles have a soul, rocks have power.” – Henry David Thoreau
84. “I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual.” – Henry David Thoreau
85. “We can never have enough of nature.” – Henry David Thoreau
Share these Famous Philosopher Henry David Thoreau Quotes with your friends, family, and loved ones to inspire them as well.
2. “Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.” – Henry David Thoreau
3. “I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.” – Henry David Thoreau
4. “I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that 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
5. “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
6. “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.” – Henry David Thoreau
7. “We are constantly invited to be what we are.” – Henry David Thoreau
8. “Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.” – Henry David Thoreau
9. “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.” – Henry David Thoreau
11. “When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality.” – Henry David Thoreau
12. “The question is not what you look at, but what you see.” – Henry David Thoreau
13. “Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.” – Henry David Thoreau
14. “It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?” – Henry David Thoreau
16. “Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.” – Henry David Thoreau
17. “You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.” – Henry David Thoreau
18. “I can alter my life by altering my attitude. He who would have nothing to do with thorns must never attempt to gather flowers.” – Henry David Thoreau
19. “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 you are in paradise.” – Henry David Thoreau
21. “All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be.” – Henry David Thoreau
22. “I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.” – Henry David Thoreau
23. “Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?” – Henry David Thoreau
24. “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 he hears, however measured or far away.” – Henry David Thoreau
26. “Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.” – Henry David Thoreau
27. “Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then.” – Henry David Thoreau
28. “All good things are wild and free.” – Henry David Thoreau
29. “An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.” – Henry David Thoreau
30. “The path of least resistance leads to crooked rivers and crooked men.” – Henry David Thoreau
More Best Inspirational Henry David Thoreau Life Quotes
31. “In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.” – Henry David Thoreau
32. “Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.” – Henry David Thoreau
33. “This world is but canvas to our imaginations.” – Henry David Thoreau
34. “Amid a world of noisy, shallow actors it is noble to stand aside and say, I will simply be.” – Henry David Thoreau
35. “Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.” – Henry David Thoreau
36. “I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.” – Henry David Thoreau
37. “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
38. “We are born as innocents. We are polluted by advice.” – Henry David Thoreau
39. “A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts. We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us.” – Henry David Thoreau
40. “The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.” – Henry David Thoreau
41. “It is never too late to give up your prejudices.” – Henry David Thoreau
42. “Men are born to succeed, not to fail.” – Henry David Thoreau
43. “What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.” – Henry David Thoreau
44. “I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.” – Henry David Thoreau
45. “It is not worth the while to let our imperfections disturb us always.” – Henry David Thoreau
46. “To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake.” – Henry David Thoreau
47. “There is no remedy for love but to love more.” – Henry David Thoreau
48. “Be resolutely and faithfully what you are; be humbly what you aspire to be.” – Henry David Thoreau
49. “Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.” – Henry David Thoreau
50. “It takes two to speak the truth - one to speak and another to hear.” – Henry David Thoreau
51. “In the long run men only hit what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high.” – Henry David Thoreau
52. “All change is a miracle to contemplate, but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.” – Henry David Thoreau
53. “There are many fine things we cannot say if we have to shout.” – Henry David Thoreau
54. “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” – Henry David Thoreau
55. “There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.” – Henry David Thoreau
56. “Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.” – Henry David Thoreau
57. “It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.” – Henry David Thoreau
58. “The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. I have no wealth to bestow on him. If he knows that I am happy in loving him, he will want no other reward.” – Henry David Thoreau
59. “What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.” – Henry David Thoreau
60. “The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.” – Henry David Thoreau
61. “Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify!” – Henry David Thoreau
62. “I make myself rich by making my wants few.” – Henry David Thoreau
63. “In wildness is the preservation of the world.” – Henry David Thoreau
64. “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” – Henry David Thoreau
65. “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” – Henry David Thoreau
66. “Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.” – Henry David Thoreau
67. “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.” – Henry David Thoreau
68. “Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.” – Henry David Thoreau
69. “Man is the artificer of his own happiness.” – Henry David Thoreau
70. “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
71. “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
72. “Give me for my friends and neighbors wild men, not tame ones. The wildness of the savage is but a faint symbol of the awful ferity with which good men and lovers meet.” – Henry David Thoreau
73. “When it is time to die, let us not discover that we have never lived.” – Henry David Thoreau
74. “The biggest happiness is when at the end of the year you feel better than at the beginning.” – Henry David Thoreau
75. “Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps.” – Henry David Thoreau
76. “Death is beautiful when seen to be a law, and not an accident. It is as common as life.” – Henry David Thoreau
77. “Nature will bear the closest inspection; she invites us to lay our eye level with the smallest leaf.” – Henry David Thoreau
78. “Every blade in the field—every leaf in the forest—lays down its life in its season as beautifully as it was taken up.” – Henry David Thoreau
79. “A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.” – Henry David Thoreau
80. “There is a love of wild nature in everybody.” – Henry David Thoreau
81. “What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?” – Henry David Thoreau
82. “Time spent amongst trees is never wasted time.” – Henry David Thoreau
83. “The earth is a living thing. Mountains speak, trees sing, lakes can think, pebbles have a soul, rocks have power.” – Henry David Thoreau
84. “I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual.” – Henry David Thoreau
85. “We can never have enough of nature.” – Henry David Thoreau
Share these Famous Philosopher Henry David Thoreau Quotes with your friends, family, and loved ones to inspire them as well.