Henry David Thoreau Quotes that are Life Long Inspirational in 2024

Filed in Quote by on February 13, 2024

Looking for the Best Henry David Thoreau Quotes? We’ve prepared this collection of inspirational quotes from Thoreau for you. Born on July 12, 1817, Henry David Thoreau was an American essayist, poet, and practical philosopher, widely recognized for his masterworks Walden and Civil Disobedience.

The first one is a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, inspired by transcendentalist philosophy, and the second one is an essay that reveals Thoreau’s defence of the private, individual conscience.

In 1837, Thoreau graduated from Harvard and searched for a teaching job in Concord. He soon realized that he wasn’t the strict type, a disciplinarian, so he resigned after only two weeks.

The good thing about going back to Concord was that Thoreau not only had the chance to meet Ralph Waldo Emerson, but to become his disciple. 

Henry David Thoreau Quotes

Thoreau saw in him a mentor and a friend. It was then that he began writing nature poetry and was exposed to transcendentalism.

1. “Rather than love, then money, than fame, give me the truth.” – Henry David Thoreau quotes

2. “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 thoughts, we wish to dominate our lives.” – Henry David Thoreau

3. “The universe is wider than our views of it.” – Henry David Thoreau

4. “Rather than love, then money, then fame, give me the truth.” – Henry David Thoreau

5. “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” – Henry David Thoreau

6. “The question is not what you look at, but what you see.” – Henry David Thoreau

7. “Surely joy is the condition of life.” – Henry David Thoreau

8. “Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.” – Henry David Thoreau

9. “Be not simply good – be good for something.” – Henry David Thoreau

10. “Only that travelling is good, which reveals to me the value of a home and enables me to enjoy it better.” – Henry David Thoreau

11. “The language of friendship is not words but meanings.” – Henry David Thoreau

12. “Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.” – Henry David Thoreau

13. “It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.” – Henry David Thoreau quotes

14. “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

15. “What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.” – Henry David Thoreau

16. “Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.” – Henry David Thoreau

17. “Be yourself- not your idea of what you think somebody else’s idea of yourself should be.” – Henry David Thoreau

18. “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” – Henry David Thoreau

19. “Goodness is the only investment that never fails.” – Henry David Thoreau

20. “All good things are wild and free.” – Henry David Thoreau

21. “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately…” – Henry David Thoreau

22. “Detail fritters away from our life… simplify, simplify.” – Henry David Thoreau

23. “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

24. “Not all who wander are lost.” – Henry David Thoreau quotes

25. “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

26. “Things do not change; we change.” – Henry David Thoreau

27. “Men are born to succeed, not to fail.” – Henry David Thoreau

28. “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

29. “The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.” – Henry David Thoreau

30. “Most of the luxuries and many so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.” – Henry David Thoreau

31. “Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.” – Henry David Thoreau

32. “Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.” – Henry David Thoreau

33. “All good things are wild and free.” – Henry David Thoreau

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

35. “There is no remedy for love but to love more.” – Henry David Thoreau

36. “What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.” – Henry David Thoreau

37. “Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.” – Henry David Thoreau

38. “Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” – Henry David Thoreau

39. “Be yourself, not your idea of what you think somebody else’s idea of yourself should be.” – Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau quotes

Quotes About Nature

40. “It is never too late to give up our prejudices.” – Henry David Thoreau

41. As if you could kill time without injuring eternity – Henry David Thoreau

42. “Heaven is under our feet and over our heads.” – Henry David Thoreau quotes

43. “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

44. “If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.” – Henry David Thoreau

45. “For an impenetrable shield, stand inside yourself.” – Henry David Thoreau

46. “Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?” – Henry David Thoreau

47. “When I hear music, I fear no danger. Therefore, I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times and to the latest.” – Henry David Thoreau

48. “Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.”― Henry David Thoreau

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

50. “I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion.”― Henry David Thoreau

51. “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

52. “Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.”― Henry David Thoreau

53. “It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?”― Henry David Thoreau

54. “The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend.”― Henry David Thoreau quotes

55. “I have an immense appetite for solitude, like an infant for sleep, and if I don’t get enough for this year, I shall cry all the next. ” ― Henry David Thoreau

56. “All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be.”― Henry David Thoreau

57. “The path of least resistance leads to crooked rivers and crooked men.” ― Henry David Thoreau

58. “Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.” – Henry David Thoreau

59. “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.” – Henry David Thoreau

60. “Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.” – Henry David Thoreau

61. “This world is but canvas to our imaginations.” – Henry David Thoreau

62. “Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.” – Henry David Thoreau

63. “Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.” – Henry David Thoreau

64. “We are born as innocents. We are polluted by advice.” – Henry David Thoreau quotes

65. “Life in us is like the water in a river.” – Henry David Thoreau

66. “To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit it and read it are old women over their tea” – Henry David Thoreau

67. “If misery loves company, misery has company enough.” – Henry David Thoreau

68. “To know that we know what we know and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.” – Henry David Thoreau

69. “The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.” – Henry David Thoreau

70. “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

71. “Books are to be distinguished by the grandeur of their topics even more than by the manner in which they are treated.” – Henry David Thoreau

72. “Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.” – Henry David Thoreau

73. “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

74. “If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are translated?” – Henry David Thoreau

75. “Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another?” – Henry David Thoreau

76. “No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well.” – Henry David Thoreau

77. “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 quotes

78. “There 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.” – Henry David Thoreau

79. “While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.” – Henry David Thoreau

Quotes About Love

80. “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]

81. “I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.”

82. “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.”

83. “The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.”

84. “Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution.”

85. “What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?”

86. “Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another?”

87. “It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.”

88. “To be admitted to Nature’s hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push aside the curtain.”

89. “The bluebird carries the sky on his back.”

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

91. “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.”

92. “Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.”

93. “Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without.”

94. “Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”

95. “The heart is forever inexperienced.”

96. “May we so love as never to have occasion to repent of our love!”

97. “There is no remedy for love but to love more.”

98. “Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.”

99. “There is a danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.”

100. Friends… they cherish one another’s hopes. They are kind to one another’s dreams.

101. “The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.”

102. “The language of friendship is not words but meanings.”

103. “I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.”

104. “True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.”

105. “Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.”

106. “Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.”

107. “If misery loves company, misery has company enough.”

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

109. “I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”

110. “I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.”

111. “I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls.”

112. “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.”

113. “Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.”

114. “There is always a present and extant life, be it better or worse, which all combine to uphold.”

115. “Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.”

116. “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.”

117. “If an injustice requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the government machine.”

118. “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.”

119. “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.”

Henry David Thoreau Quotes About Solitude

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

121. “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.”

122. “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.”

123. “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.”

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

125. “Things do not change; we change.”

126. “Our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify.”

127. “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

128. “Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”

129. “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life.”

130. “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.”

131. “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”

132. “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be.”

133. “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”

134. “To be awake is to be alive.”

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

136. “Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life.”

137. “What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.”

138. “I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.”

139. “There is no remedy for love but to love more.”

140. “Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.”

141. “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.”

142. “The only way to tell the truth is to speak with kindness. Only the words of a loving man can be heard.”

143. “Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.”

144. “I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”

145. “Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. So aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.”

146. “Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.”

147. “The language of friendship is not words but meanings.”

148. “The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when someone asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.”

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

150. “That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.”

151. “In the long run, men hit only what they aim at.”

152. “Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.”

153. “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.”

154. “Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.”

155. “Things do not change; we change.”

156. “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”

157. “Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life.”

158. “Simplify, simplify.”

159. “Be yourself—not your idea of what you think somebody else’s idea of yourself should be.”

160. “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”

Quotes About Friendship

161. “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.”

162. “It is never too late to give up your prejudices.”

163. “Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.”

164. “The universe is wider than our views of it.”

165. “Things do not change; we change.”

166. “It takes two to speak the truth—one to speak and another to hear.”

167. “The language of friendship is not words but meanings.”

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

169. “Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.”

170. “I make myself rich by making my wants few.”

171. “The only way to tell the truth is to speak with kindness. Only the words of a loving man can be heard.”

172. “Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.”

173. “In the long run, men hit only what they aim at.”

174. “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.”

175. “I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual.”

176. “Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.”

177. “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.”

178. “There is no remedy for love but to love more.”

179. “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be.”

180. “Our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify.”

181. “It is never too late to give up your prejudices.”

182. “I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.”

183. “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.”

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

185. “The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when someone asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.”

186. “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

187. “It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?”

188. “There is no remedy for love but to love more.”

189. “I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”

Henry David Thoreau quotes

Quotes About Lifestyle

190. “The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”

191. “It is never too late to give up your prejudices.”

192. “Men have become the tools of their tools.”

193. “All good things are wild and free.”

194. “Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”

195. “I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.”

196. “Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.”

197. “The only way to tell the truth is to speak with kindness. Only the words of a loving man can be heard.”

198. “Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.”

199. “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”

200. “The sun is but a morning star.”

CSN Team.

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