250+ Henry David Thoreau Quotes On Life And How To Live

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 for disobedience to an unjust state.

Henry David Thoreau Quotes

1. 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
2. I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born. – Henry David Thoreau
3. Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors. – Henry David Thoreau
4. I am sorry to think that you do not get a man’s most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness. – Henry David Thoreau
5. Simplify your life. Don’t waste the years struggling for things that are unimportant. Don’t burden yourself with possessions. Keep your needs and wants simple and enjoy what you have. Don’t destroy your peace of mind by looking back, worrying about the past. Live in the present. Simplify! – Henry David Thoreau
6. Enthusiasm is a supernatural serenity. – Henry David Thoreau
7. The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest. – Henry David Thoreau
8. It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil. – Henry David Thoreau
9. Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve. – Henry David Thoreau
10. Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul. – Henry David Thoreau
11. As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society. – Henry David Thoreau
12. Things do not change; we change. – Henry David Thoreau
13. The path of least resistance leads to crooked rivers and crooked men. – Henry David Thoreau
14. Not only must we be good, but we must also be good for something. – Henry David Thoreau
15. Love must be as much a light, as it is a flame. – Henry David Thoreau
16. None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm. – Henry David Thoreau
17. Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing. – Henry David Thoreau
18. 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
19. There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted. – Henry David Thoreau
20. Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe. – Henry David Thoreau
21. There is no just and serene criticism as yet. – Henry David Thoreau
22. 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 kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives. – Henry David Thoreau
23. There is always a present and extant life, be it better or worse, which all combine to uphold. – Henry David Thoreau
24. Be yourself, not your idea of what you think somebody else’s idea of yourself should be. – Henry David Thoreau
25. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society. – Henry David Thoreau
26. Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only indispensable but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. – Henry David Thoreau
27. Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined. – Henry David Thoreau
28. Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after. – Henry David Thoreau
29. That government is best which governs least. – Henry David Thoreau
30. Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. – Henry David Thoreau
31. O for a man who is a man, and, as my neighbor says, has a bone in his back which you cannot pass your hand through! – Henry David Thoreau
32. I love Nature partly because she is not man, but a retreat from him. None of his institutions control or pervade her. There a different kind of right prevails. In her midst, I can be glad with an entire gladness. – Henry David Thoreau
33. It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all. – Henry David Thoreau
34. What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us. – Henry David Thoreau
35. Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes. – Henry David Thoreau
36. All men are children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the morning. – Henry David Thoreau
37. It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious. – Henry David Thoreau
38. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. – Henry David Thoreau
39. If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment. – Henry David Thoreau
40. There is a danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone. – Henry David Thoreau
41. Only he is successful in his business who makes that pursuit which affords him the highest pleasure sustain him. – Henry David Thoreau
42. In a world of peace and love, music would be the universal language. – Henry David Thoreau
43. 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
44. Till we have loved we have not imagined the heights of love. – Henry David Thoreau
45. We know but a few men, a great many coats and breeches. – Henry David Thoreau
46. The lawyer’s truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency. – Henry David Thoreau
47. Surely joy is the condition of life. – Henry David Thoreau
48. Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes – Henry David Thoreau
49. What you get by achieving your goals is to as important as what you become by achieving your goals. – Henry David Thoreau
50. Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads. – Henry David Thoreau
51. For an impenetrable shield, stand inside yourself. – Henry David Thoreau
52. We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see. – Henry David Thoreau
53. There is but one stage for the peasant and the actor. – Henry David Thoreau
54. Faith never makes a confession. – Henry David Thoreau
55. An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day. – Henry David Thoreau
56. A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone. – Henry David Thoreau
57. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living. – Henry David Thoreau
58. Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed… Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders. – Henry David Thoreau
59. All good things are wild and free. – Henry David Thoreau
60. Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand. – Henry David Thoreau
61. True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance. – Henry David Thoreau
62. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn. – Henry David Thoreau
63. 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
64. There is no rule more invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspect. – Henry David Thoreau
65. 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
66. The question is not what you look at, but what you see. – Henry David Thoreau
67. Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe. – Henry David Thoreau
68. It is after all with men, and not with parchment, that I quarrel. – Henry David Thoreau
69. Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still. – Henry David Thoreau
70. Do not worry if you have built your castles in the air. They are where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. – Henry David Thoreau
71. I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. – Henry David Thoreau
72. Tis healthy to be sick sometimes. – Henry David Thoreau
73. The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. – Henry David Thoreau
74. One farmer says to me, ‘You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with;’ and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle. – Henry David Thoreau
75. Before printing was discovered, a century was equal to a thousand years. – Henry David Thoreau
76. How insufficient is all wisdom without love. – Henry David Thoreau
77. 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
78. We are born as innocents. We are polluted by advice. – Henry David Thoreau
79. The perception of beauty is a moral test. – Henry David Thoreau
80. I love you not as something private and personal, which is my own, but as something universal and worthy of love, which I have found. – Henry David Thoreau
81. It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive. – Henry David Thoreau
82. 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
83. Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. – Henry David Thoreau
84. Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. – Henry David Thoreau
85. There are old heads in the world who cannot help me by their example or advice to live worthily and satisfactorily to myself but I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life. – Henry David Thoreau
86. Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other breaks into pieces. – Henry David Thoreau
87. Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling. – Henry David Thoreau
88. Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves. – Henry David Thoreau
89. I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we mingle with the herd of common men. – Henry David Thoreau
90. Life in us is like the water in a river. – Henry David Thoreau
91. It is too late to be studying Hebrew; it is more important to understand even the slang of today. – Henry David Thoreau
92. It is what a man thinks of himself that really determines his fate. – Henry David Thoreau
93. Be resolutely and faithfully what you are; be humbly what you aspire to be. – Henry David Thoreau
94. The rich man is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. – Henry David Thoreau
95. That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest. – Henry David Thoreau
96. In wilderness is the preservation of the world. – Henry David Thoreau
97. After the first blush of sin comes its indifference. – Henry David Thoreau
98. 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
99. Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake. – Henry David Thoreau
100. There will never be a really free and enlightened state until the state comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived. – Henry David Thoreau
101. Men are born to succeed, not to fail. – Henry David Thoreau
102. Do not lose hold of your dreams or aspirations. For if you do, you may still exist but you have ceased to live. – Henry David Thoreau
103. What is the singing of birds, or any natural sound, compared with the voice of one we love? – Henry David Thoreau
104. For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done forever. – Henry David Thoreau
105. The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer. – Henry David Thoreau
106. All endeavor calls for the ability to tramp the last mile, shape the last plan, endure the last hours toil. The fight to the finish spirit is the one… characteristic we must posses if we are to face the future as finishers. – Henry David Thoreau
107. Justice is sweet and musical; but injustice is harsh and discordant. – Henry David Thoreau
108. I have found that hollow, which even I had relied on for solid. – Henry David Thoreau
109. It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man. – Henry David Thoreau
110. Goodness is the only investment that never fails. – Henry David Thoreau
111. We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success. – Henry David Thoreau
112. 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. – Henry David Thorea
113. I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks. – Henry David Thoreau
114. 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
115. Grow wild according to thy nature… Enjoy the land but own it not. – Henry David Thoreau
116. It is never too late to give up our prejudices. – Henry David Thoreau
117. The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it. – Henry David Thoreau
118. Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them. – Henry David Thoreau
119. I believe that water is the only drink for the wise man. – Henry David Thoreau
120. There never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be. – Henry David Thoreau
121. How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living? – Henry David Thoreau
122. Never look back unless you are planning to go that way. – Henry David Thoreau
123. I can alter my life by altering my attitude. He who would have nothing to do with thorns must never attempt to gather flowers. – Henry David Thoreau
124. Men have become the tools of their tools. – Henry David Thoreau
125. Great men, unknown to their generation, have their fame among the great who have preceded them, and all true worldly fame subsides from their high estimate beyond the stars. – Henry David Thoreau
126. The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready. – Henry David Thoreau
127. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. – Henry David Thoreau
128. What is once well done is done forever. – Henry David Thoreau
129. Friends… they cherish one another’s hopes. They are kind to one another’s dreams. – Henry David Thoreau
130. 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
131. 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
132. 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
133. The fibers of all things have their tension and are strained like the strings of an instrument. – Henry David Thoreau
134. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends… Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. – Henry David Thoreau
135. A lawyer’s truth is not truth. It is consistency, or consistent expediency – Henry David Thoreau
136. All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man. – Henry David Thoreau
137. I have a room all to myself; it is nature. – Henry David Thoreau
138. If this world were all man, I could not stretch myself, I should lose all hope. He is constraint, she is freedom to me. He makes me wish for another world. She makes me content with this. – Henry David Thoreau
139. What is called genius is the abundance of life and health. – Henry David Thoreau
140. If you’re enjoying these quotes, make sure to read our collection of Earth Day quotes that inspire an eco-friendly lifestyle. – Henry David Thoreau
141. I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business. – Henry David Thoreau
142. In the meanest are all the materials of manhood, only they are not rightly disposed. – Henry David Thoreau
143. In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, they had better aim at something high. – Henry David Thoreau
144. Front yards are not made to walk in, but, at most, through, and you could go in the back way. – Henry David Thoreau
145. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it. – Henry David Thoreau
146. How can any man be weak who dares to be at all?” – Henry David Thoreau
147. There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature. – Henry David Thoreau
148. The only people who ever get anyplace interesting are the people who get lost. – Henry David Thoreau
149. Some are reputed sick and some are not. It often happens that the sicker man is the nurse to the sounder. – Henry David Thoreau
150. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor 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. – Henry David Thoreau
151. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. – Henry David Thoreau
152. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new. – Henry David Thoreau
153. Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. – Henry David Thoreau
154. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. – Henry David Thoreau
155. What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals. – Henry David Thoreau
156. 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
157. 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. – Henry David Thoreau
158. The language of friendship is not words but meanings. – Henry David Thoreau
159. I have seen how the foundations of the world are laid, and I have not the least doubt that it will stand a good while. – Henry David Thoreau
160. 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. – Henry David Thoreau
161. 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
162. The savage in man is never quite eradicated. – Henry David Thoreau
163. Alas! how little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape! – Henry David Thoreau
164. Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new. – Henry David Thoreau
165. We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect. – Henry David Thoreau
166. 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. – Henry David Thoreau
167. 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
168. The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. – Henry David Thoreau
169. There is only one path to heaven. On Earth, we call it love. – Henry David Thoreau
170. Do what nobody else can do for you. Omit to do anything else. – Henry David Thoreau
171. How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them. – Henry David Thoreau
172. Wealth is the ability to fully experience life. – Henry David Thoreau
173. I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls. – Henry David Thoreau
174. I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion. – Henry David Thoreau
175. When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods – what would become of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall? – Henry David Thoreau
176. Dreams are the touchstones of our character. – Henry David Thoreau
177. Not till we are completely lost or turned around…do we begin to find ourselves. – Henry David Thoreau
178. What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on? – Henry David Thoreau
179. Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant? – Henry David Thoreau
180. The universe is wider than our views of it. – Henry David Thoreau
181. Where there is an observatory and a telescope, we expect that any eyes will see new worlds at once. – Henry David Thoreau
182. Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around. – Henry David Thoreau
183. If a man walk 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 whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. As if a town had no interest in its forests but to cut them down! – Henry David Thoreau
184. 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. – Henry David Thoreau
185. The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth. – Henry David Thoreau
186. I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.” – Henry David Thoreau
187. Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men. – Henry David Thoreau
188. The world is but a canvas to our imagination. – Henry David Thoreau
189. To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle. – Henry David Thoreau
190. It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear. – Henry David Thoreau
191. We should distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes. – Henry David Thoreau
192. The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star. – Henry David Thoreau
193. There is no remedy to love, but to love more. – Henry David Thoreau
194. Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it. – Henry David Thoreau
195. God reigns when we take a liberal view, when a liberal view is presented to us. – Henry David Thoreau
196. Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day. – Henry David Thoreau
197. 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 – Henry David Thoreau
198. Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself. – Henry David Thoreau
199. 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
200. We need the tonic of wildness… At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature. – Henry David Thoreau
201. Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it? – Henry David Thoreau
202. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. – Henry David Thoreau
203. How does it become a man to behave towards the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. – Henry David Thoreau
204. It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about? – Henry David Thoreau
205. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. – Henry David Thoreau
206. Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence. – Henry David Thoreau
207. The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness. – Henry David Thoreau
208. As for doing good; that is one of the professions which is full. Moreover I have tried it fairly and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution. – Henry David Thoreau
209. Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it. – Henry David Thoreau
210. A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man’s life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars. – Henry David Thoreau
211. The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles. – Henry David Thoreau
212. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. – Henry David Thoreau
213. There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root. – Henry David Thoreau
214. The phenomena of the year take place every day in a pond on a small sale. Every morning, generally speaking, the shallow water is being warmed more rapidly than the deep, though it may not be made so warm after all, and every evening it is being cooled more rapidly until the morning. The day is an epitome of the year. The night is the winter, the morning and evening are the spring and fall, and the noon is the summer. – Henry David Thoreau
215. We are not what we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for what we are capable of being. – Henry David Thoreau
216. It often happens that a man develops a deeper love and friendship with his pet cat or dog than he does with most of the other humans in his life. – Henry David Thoreau
217. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. – Henry David Thoreau
218. How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. – Henry David Thoreau
219. 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
220. Enemies publish themselves. They declare war. The friend never declares his love. – Henry David Thoreau
221. As if you could kill time without injuring eternity – Henry David Thoreau
222. When it’s time to die, let us not discover that we have never lived. – Henry David Thoreau
223. 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
224. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. – Henry David Thoreau
225. Every people have gods to suit their circumstances. – Henry David Thoreau
226. Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it. – Henry David Thoreau
227. Be true to your work, your word, and your friend. – Henry David Thoreau
228. I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. – Henry David Thoreau
229. Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are. – Henry David Thoreau
230. I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark. – Henry David Thoreau
231. Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth. – Henry David Thoreau
232. A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting. – Henry David Thoreau
233. Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all. – Henry David Thoreau
234. 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
235. What is human warfare but just this an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party. – Henry David Thoreau
236. What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new. – Henry David Thoreau
237. We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn. – Henry David Thoreau
238. Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. – Henry David Thoreau
239. Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something. – Henry David Thoreau
240. It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes. – Henry David Thoreau
241. This world is but canvas to our imaginations. – Henry David Thoreau
242. If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things. – Henry David Thoreau
243. 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. – Henry David Thoreau
244. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor. – Henry David Thoreau
245. Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself. – Henry David Thoreau
246. Only that traveling is good which reveals to me the value of home and enables me to enjoy it better. – Henry David Thoreau
247. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. – Henry David Thoreau
248. A farmer, a hunter, a soldier, a reporter, even a philosopher, may be daunted; but nothing can deter a poet, for he is actuated by pure love. Who can predict his comings and goings? His business calls him out at all hours, even when doctors sleep. – Henry David Thoreau
249. They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar. – Henry David Thoreau
250. Live your life, do your work, then take your hat. – Henry David Thoreau
251. 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
252. If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. – Henry David Thoreau
253. If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself. – Henry David Thoreau
254. An unclean person is universally a slothful one. – Henry David Thoreau
255. The law will never make a man free; it is men who have got to make the law free. – Henry David Thoreau
256. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority. – Henry David Thoreau
257. Is the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man. – Henry David Thoreau
258. In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood. – Henry David Thoreau
259. Being is the great explainer. – Henry David Thoreau
260. Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves. – Henry David Thoreau
261. 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. – Henry David Thoreau
262. It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know. – Henry David Thoreau
263. It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see. – Henry David Thoreau
264. It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature. – Henry David Thoreau