Henry David Thoreau
528 quotes
Biography
Henry David Thoreau was an American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher. A leading transcendentalist, he is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay "Civil Disobedience", an argument in favor of citizen disobedience against an unjust state.
"Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence."
"The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it."
"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."
"Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake."
"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth."
"How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live."
"This world is but a canvas to our imagination."
"I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society."
"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see."
"Never look back unless you are planning to go that way."
"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them."
"Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations."
"I am a happy camper so I guess I’m doing something right. 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."
"Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still."
"Any fool can make a ruleAnd any fool will mind it."
"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."
"All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be."
"The language of Friendship is not words, but meanings."
"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."
"It's not worth our while to let our imperfections disturb us always."
"How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book."
"It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?"
"Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience."
"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."
"Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations."