Quotes by 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.

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.

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

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.

One of the most attractive things about the flowers is their beautiful reserve.

I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees.

I make myself rich by making my wants few.

Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.

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

The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness.

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.

It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.

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.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

Justice is sweet and musical; but injustice is harsh and discordant.

Me thinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.

Nothing is so much to be feared as fear.

When a dog runs at you, whistle for him.

Write while the heat is in you.

All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be.

Simplicity is the law of nature for men as well as for flowers.

In proportion as a person simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude.

I stand in awe of my body.

None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty.

Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry.

Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.

My profession is always to be alert, to find God in nature, to know God's lurking places, to attend to all the oratorios and the operas in nature.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and if I can only walk with sufficient carelessness I am sure to be filled.

Wildness is the preservation of the world.

All good things are wild and free.

Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength.

Cultivate the habit of early rising. It is unwise to keep the head long on a level with the feet.

Humility, like the darkness, reveals the heavenly lights.

What is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.

A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.

To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.

Men are born to succeed, not to fail.

There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.

The law will never make a man free; it is men who have got to make the law free.

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.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.

Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.

It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.

There is no remedy for love but to love more.

No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes; yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience.

What I am must make you forget what I wear.

It is the greatest of advantages to enjoy no advantage at all.

Each man can interpret another's experience only by his own.

A man thinks as well through his legs and arms as his brain.

I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things.

All good things are cheap: all bad are very dear.

All good things are wild and free.

The civilized man is a more experienced and wiser savage.

As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society.

Our taste is too delicate and particular. It says nay to the poet's work, but never yea to his hope.

There are two seasons when the leaves are in their glory, their green and perfect youth in June and this their ripe old age.

How did these beautiful rainbow tints get into the shell of the freshwater clam buried in the mud at the bottom of our dark river? Even the sea-bottom tells of the upper skies.

Be yourself -- not your idea of what you think somebody else's idea of yourself should be.

In the wilderness is the salvation of the world.

Be not anxious to avoid poverty. In this way the wealth of the universe may be securely invested.

Hinduism is the soil into which India's roots are stuck and torn out of that she will inevitably wither as a tree torn out from its place.

Make no mistake, without Hinduism, India has no future.

Improve every opportunity to be melancholy.

Youth gets together with their materials to build a bridge to the moon or maybe a palace on earth; then in middle age they decide to build a woodshed with them instead.

One attraction in coming to the woods to live was that I should have leisure and opportunity to see the spring come in.

Nothing makes the earth so spacious as to have friends at a distance.

Our manners have been corrupted by communication with the saints.

The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us.

One must maintain a little bit of summer even in the middle of winter.

As I go through the woods now, so many oak and other leaves have fallen the rustling noise somewhat disturbs my musing.

You must love the crust of the earth on which you dwell more than the sweet crust of any bread or cake; you must be able to extract nutriment out of a sand heap.

This is the month of nuts and nutty thoughts,--that November whose name sounds so bleak and cheerless. Perhaps its harvest of thought is worth more than all the other crops of the year.

How few are aware that in winter, when the earth is covered with snow and ice...the sunset is double. The winter is coming when I shall walk the sky.

All expression of truth does at length take this deep ethical form.

One must maintain a little bit of summer, even in the middle of winter.

The is one consolation in being sick; and that is the possibility that you may recover to a better state than you were ever in before.

The wildness and adventure that are in fishing still recommend it to me.

Be true to your work your word and your friend.

Satan from one of his elevations, showed mankind the kingdom of California, and they entered into a compact with him at once.

Tis healthy to be sick sometimes.

You must not only aim right, but draw the bow with all your might.

Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each. -- .

Cold and hunger seem more friendly to my nature than those methods which men have adopted and advise to ward them off.

There is no treatment for adore, but to love far more.

I have myself to respect, but to myself I am not amiable; but my friend is my amiableness personified.

Nature is an admirable schoolmistress.

On every hand we observe a truly wise practice, in education, in morals, and in the arts of life, the embodied wisdom of many an ancient philosopher.

Unless we do more than simply learn the trade of our time, we are but apprentices, and not yet masters of the art of life.

I begin to see an object when I cease to understand it.

As a true patriot, I should be ashamed to think that Adam in paradise was more favorably situated on the whole than the backwoodsman in this country.

When was it that men agreed to respect the appearance and not the reality?

It enriches us infinitely to recognize greater qualities than we possess in another.

The community has no bribe that will tempt a wise man.

When the far mountains are invisible, the near ones look the higher.

Events, circumstances, etc., have their origin in ourselves. They spring from seeds which we have sown.

Every man is entitled to come to Cattle-Show, even a transcendentalist; and for my part I am more interested in the men than in the cattle.

Friends will be much apart. They will respect more each other's privacy than their communion.

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

Every man has to learn the points of the compass again as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction.

When a man's conscience and the laws clash, it is his conscience that he must follow.

I believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the night in which the corn grows.

As far as I have heard or observed, the principal object is, not that mankind may be well and honestly clad, but, unquestionably, that corporations may be enriched.

Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.

They take great pride in making their dinner cost much; I take my pride in making my dinner cost so little.

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us.

Wealth cannot purchase any great private solace or convenience. Riches are only the means of sociality.

I am a citizen of the world first, and of this country at a later and more convenient hour.

This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and imbibes delight through every pore.

Most people dread finding out when they come to die that they have never really lived.

It is said that some Western steamers can run on a heavy dew, whence we can imagine what a canoe may do.

A journal, is a book that shall contain a record of all your joy, your ecstasy, what you are grateful for.

Every man must walk to the beat of his own drummer.

Where there is not discernment, the behavior even of the purest soul may in effect amount to coarseness.

An efficient and valuable man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not.

The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it.

Birds do not sing in caves, nor do doves cherish their innocence in dovecots.

Do not despair of your life. You have force enough to overcome your obstacles.

What is the use of going right over the old track again? There is an adder in the path which your own feet have worn. You must make tracks into the Unknown.

Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?

Man emulates earth Earth emulates heaven Heaven emulates the Way The way emulates nature.

Endeavor to live the life you have imagined.

He who rides and keeps the beaten track studies the fences chiefly.

The frontiers are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man fronts a fact.

One is wise to cultivate the tree that bears fruit in our soul.

As they say in geology, time never fails, there is always enough of it, so I may say, criticism never fails.

Insane!... Ask the tyrant who is his most dangerous foe, the sane man or the insane?

Yet we must try the harder, the less the prospect of success.

How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had a seedtime of character?

Commonly men will only be brave as their fathers were brave, or timid.

The greater number of men are merely corporals.

The higher the mountain on which you stand, the less change in the prospect from year to year, from age to age. Above a certain height there is no change.

The highest condition of art is artlessness.

We cannot well do without our sins; they are the highway of our virtue.

I thought, as I have my living to get, and have not eaten today, that I might go a- fishing. That's the true industry for poets. It is the only trade I have learned.

I have learned that even the smallest house can be a home.

Love is no individual's experience; and though we are imperfect mediums, it does not partake of our imperfection; though we are finite, it is infinite and eternal.

When will the world learn that a million men are of no importance compared with one man?

When the true criminals are running around free, the only honorable place for a decent human being is in prisons.

Methinks my own soul must be a bright invisible green.

Every man should stand for a force which is perfectly irresistible.

No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America. They are rare in the history of the world.

Trade and commerce, if they were not made of Indian rubber, would never manage to bounce over the obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way.

Pity the man who has a character to support -- it is worse than a large family -- he is silent poor indeed.

We are happy in proportion to the things we can do without.

Economy is a subject which admits of being treated with levity, but it cannot so be disposed of.

With wisdom we shall learn liberality.

The same soil is good for men and for trees. A man's health requires as many acres of meadow to his prospect as his farm does loads of muck.

We must have infinite faith in each other. If we have not, we must never let it leak out that we have not.

Friendship is evanescent in every man's experience, and remembered like heat lightning in past summers.

There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature and has his senses still.

The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual.

The poet who walks by moonlight is conscious of a tide in his thought which is to be referred to lunar influence.

It is no more dusky in ordinary nights than our mind's habitual atmosphere, and the moonlight is as bright as our most illuminatedmoments are.

How shall we account for our pursuits, if they are original? We get the language with which to describe our various lives out of acommon mint.

Oh, one world at a time!

Man is an animal who more than any other can adapt himself to all climates and circumstances.

I am not responsible for the successful working of the machinery of society.

The language of Friendship is not words, but meanings.

Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at Nature directly, but only with the side of his eye. He must look through and beyond her.

At present our only true names are nicknames.

The child should have the advantage of ignorance as well as of knowledge, and is fortunate if he gets his share of neglect and exposure.

Poetry is the mysticism of mankind.

If the fairest features of the landscape are to be named after men, let them be the noblest and worthiest men alone.

Even in our democratic New England towns the accidental possession of wealth, and its manifestation in dress and equipage alone, obtain for the possessor almost universal respect.

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book!

Color, which is the poet's wealth, is so expensive that most take to mere outline sketches and become men of science.

I learned to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of nature, rather than a member of society.

Many old people receive pensions for no other reason, it seems to me, but as a compensation for having lived a long time ago.

Be as the sailor who keeps the polestar in his eye. By so doing we may not arrive at our port within a calculable period, but we will maintain a true course.

For my part, I could easily do without the post-office. I think that there are very few important communications made through it.

The highest law gives a thing to him who can use it.

I do not see why the schoolmaster should be taxed to support the priest, and not the priest the schoolmaster.

The true finish is the work of time, and the use to which a thing is put. The elements are still polishing the pyramids.

The oldest, wisest politician grows not more human so, but is merely a gray wharf rat at last.

Man's moral nature is a riddle which only eternity can solve.

Many men walk by day; few walk by night. It is a different season.

The mass of men are very easily imposed on. They have their runways in which they always travel, and are sure to fall into any pit or box-trap set therein.

Routine is a ground to stand on, a wall to retreat to; we cannot draw on our boots without bracing ourselves against it.

From exertion come wisdom and purity; from sloth ignorance and sensuality.

There are more consequences to a shipwreck than the underwriters notice.

If I ever see more clearly at one time than at another, the medium through which I see is clearer.

Every man will be a poet if he can; otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the poet.

Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense? The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring.

Consider what stuff history is made of, -- that for the most part it is merely a story agreed on by posterity.

In the summer we lay up a stock of experiences for the winter, as the squirrel of nuts?something for conversation in winter evenings.

The imagination, give it the least license, dives deeper and soars higher than Nature goes.

Let things alone; let them weigh what they will; let them soar or fall.

The great poem must have the stamp of greatness as well as its essence.

It is the man determines what is said, not the words.

Are you in want of amusement nowadays? Then play a little at the game of getting a living. There was never anything equal to it. Do it temperately, though, and don't sweat.

I have learned that the swiftest traveller is he that goes afoot.

Truth, Goodness, Beauty -- those celestial thrins,Continually are born; e'en now the Universe,With thousand throats, and eke with greener smiles,Its joy confesses at their recent birth.

We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor.

Open all your pores and bathe in all the tides of nature, in all her streams and oceans, at all seasons.