Henry David Thoreau Quotes

Nature abhors a vacuum, and if I can only walk with sufficient carelessness I am sure to be filled.
Man is the artificer of his own happiness.
The language of friendship is not words but meanings.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
Goodness is the only investment that never fails.
Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.
Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows.
I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
Things do not change we change.
To affect the quality of the day that is the art of life.
I have learned this at least by my experiment that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible And indescribably as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, A segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.
In what concerns you much, do not think that you have companions: know that you are alone in the world.
Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.
My friend is one... who take me for what I am.
The man who goes alone can start today but he who travels with another must wait till the other is ready, and it may be along time before they get off.
Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.
What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.
What a man thinks of himself that is what determines, or rather indicates his fate.
Thank God men cannot as yet fly and lay waste the sky as well as the earth
What men call good fellowship is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter which lie close together to keep each other warm.
The universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to discuss the characters of individuals.
In wildness is the preservation of the world. - from Walking
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.
I have lived some thirty years on this planet and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.
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, how ever measured or far away.
I have lived some thirty-odd years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.
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.
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 faraway.
The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.
The cost of a things is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.
To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, not even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.
The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.
When I read some of the rules for speaking and writing the English language correctly...I think-- Any fool can make a rule And every fool will mind it.
Heroes are often the most ordinary of men.
I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.
All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy we reason from our hands to our head.
All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy.
What is a country without rabbits and partridges They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products ancient and venerable familes known to antiquity as to modern times of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground.
None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty.
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.
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.
Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.
In solitude especialy do we begin to appreciate the advantage of living with someone who can think.
Must be out-of-doors enough to get experience of wholesome reality, as a ballast to thought and sentiment. Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life
What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.
The language of friendship is not words, but meanings. It is an intelligence about language.
Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody.