The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
- Henry David Thoreau
However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.
- Henry David Thoreau
Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder ...
- Henry David Thoreau
It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about?
- 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
Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?
- Henry David Thoreau
Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.
- Henry David Thoreau
Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry.
- Henry David Thoreau
Let go of the past and go for the future. Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you imagined.
- Henry David Thoreau
What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?
- Henry David Thoreau
To be awake is to be alive.
- Henry David Thoreau
How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual friends, that we might go and meet their ideal cousins.
- Henry David Thoreau
We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see. How few things can a man measure with the tape of his understanding! How many greater things might he be seeing in the meanwhile!
- Henry David Thoreau
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity!
- Henry David Thoreau
The only way to tell the truth is to speak with kindness. Only the words of a loving man can be heard.
- Henry David Thoreau
I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do.
- Henry David Thoreau
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.
- Henry David Thoreau
Dreams are the touchstones of our character.
- Henry David Thoreau
Thought is the sculptor who can create the person you want to be.
- Henry David Thoreau
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.
- Henry David Thoreau
Love must be as much a light as it is a flame.
- Henry David Thoreau
None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
- Henry David Thoreau
A man is wise with the wisdom of his time only, and ignorant with its ignorance.
- Henry David Thoreau
Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw.
- Henry David Thoreau
If a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as many risks as he runs.
Walden
- Henry David Thoreau
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. You must have so good an appetite as this, else you will live in vain.
- Henry David Thoreau
How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had a seedtime of character?
- Henry David Thoreau
Our circumstances answer to our expectations and the demand of our natures.
- Henry David Thoreau
We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.
- Henry David Thoreau
When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.
- 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
Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.
- Henry David Thoreau
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. Is not friendship divine in this?
- Henry David Thoreau
If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.
- Henry David Thoreau
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.
- Henry David Thoreau
There is no remedy for love but to love more.
- 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
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 which he hears, however measured or far away.
- 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
That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest.
- Henry David Thoreau
The world is but a canvas to the imagination.
- Henry David Thoreau
True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.
- Henry David Thoreau
Things do not change, we change.
- Henry David Thoreau
How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
- Henry David Thoreau
Men rush to California and Australia as if the true gold were to be found in that direction; but that is to go to the very opposite extreme to where it lies. They go prospecting farther and farther away from the true lead, and are most unfortunate when they think themselves most successful.
- Henry David Thoreau
Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.
- Henry David Thoreau
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