Henry David Thoreau quote: "We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us even in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavour. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts."

Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibil...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

In the meanest are all the materials of manhood, only they are not rightly disposed.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. ...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a ...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

How sweet is the perception of a new natural fact!
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

God reigns when we take a liberal view, when a liberal view is presented to us.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

All men are children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the ...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any noblen...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Simplify, simplify.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

To be awake is to be alive.
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

Before printing was discovered, a century was equal to a thousand years.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

There is one consolation in being sick; and that is the possibility that you may recover to a better...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

The perception of beauty is a moral test.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the worl...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

What is once well done is done forever.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when si...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

There are old heads in the world who cannot help me by their example or advice to live worthily and ...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

That government is best which governs least.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man doe...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Be not simply good - be good for something.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Justice is sweet and musical; but injustice is harsh and discordant.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

It is what a man thinks of himself that really determines his fate.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women o...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place exce...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inh...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Live the life you've dreamed.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, ...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Goodness is the only investment that never fails.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Truths and roses have thorns about them.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

We know but a few men, a great many coats and breeches.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

The savage in man is never quite eradicated.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf,...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

There is no remedy for love than to love more.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Love must be as much a light, as it is a flame.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

I heartily accept the motto,That government is best which governs least; and I should like to see it...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

I must walk toward Oregon, and not toward Europe. And that way the nation is moving, and I may say t...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Eastward I go only by force; but westward I go free.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Nothing is so much to be feared as fear.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may ...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your wo...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

I lose my respect for the man who can make the mystery of sex the subject of a coarse jest, yet when...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They ar...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Every man will be a poet if he can; otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the super...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

If a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be l...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

If I shall sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I'm sure that, fo...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Whether the flower looks better in the nosegay than in the meadow where it grew and we had to wet ou...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and f...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

The bluebird carries the sky on his back.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

The world is but a canvas to our imagination.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

This world is but a canvas to our imaginations.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

The government of the world I live in was not framed, like that of Britain, in after-dinner conversa...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are so...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

This American government -- what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it g...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

A man's interest in a single bluebird is worth more than a complete but dry list of the fauna an...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for law, so much as a respect for right.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can commit the least act of injust...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

There is something servile in the habit of seeking after a law which we may obey. We may study the l...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

The pleasure we feel in music springs from the obedience which is in it.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Knowledge does not come to us in details, but in flashes of light from heaven.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

The knowledge of an unlearned man is living and luxuriant like a forest, but covered with mosses and...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

In the long run, we only hit what we aim at.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another's. We see so much only as we possess.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

The universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to discuss the characters of individuals.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

We perceive and are affected by changes too subtle to be described.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

If the fairest features of the landscape are to be named after men, let them be the noblest and wort...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

A name pronounced is the recognition of the individual to whom it belongs. He who can pronounce my n...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

I fear chiefly lest my expression may not be extravagant enough, may not wander far enough beyond th...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

I know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, or thoughts are affection; and am sensible ...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Sometimes we are inclined to class those who are once-and-a-half witted with the half-witted, becaus...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

You must not know too much or be too precise or scientific about birds and trees and flowers and wat...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

We are double-edged blades, and every time we whet our virtue the return stroke straps our vice.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only one fact, or the description of one actual ph...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Time is but the stream I go fishing in. I drink at it, but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and ...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

A man thinks as well through his legs and arms as this brain.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Thought is the sculptor who can create the person you want to be.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Associate reverently, as much as you can, with your loftiest thoughts.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

How can they expect a harvest of thought who have not had the seed time of character.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is a nest egg by the side of which more will be laid.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and whittled them.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway ...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the sou...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

I have a deep sympathy with war, it so apes the gait and bearing of the soul.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

The rich man is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more m...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can let alone.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

We are made happy when reason can discover no occasion for it. The memory of some past moments is mo...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

It requires nothing less than a chivalric feeling to sustain a conversation with a lady.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

How earthy old people become --moldy as the grave! Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no for...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

A friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

We have not so good a right to hate any as our Friend.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

To say that a man is your Friend, means commonly no more than this, that he is not your enemy. Most ...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Men have become the tools of their trade.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his t...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his livin...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

It takes two to speak truth -- one to speak, and another to hear.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Between whom there is hearty truth, there is love.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

You must get your living by loving, or at least half your life is a failure.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Men are born to succeed, not to fail.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will t...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; suc...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, p...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must lay it down and commence living on its h...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Politics is the gizzard of society, full of gut and gravel.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Almost any man knows how to earn money, but not one in a million knows how to spend it.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

The only wealth is life.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowled...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

It seems to me that the god that is commonly worshipped in civilized countries is not at all divine,...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

In the long run you hit only what you aim at. Therefore, though you should fail immediately, you had...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

I have lived some thirty-odd years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valu...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been rid...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Poetry implies the whole truth, philosophy expresses only a particle of it.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Pity the man who has a character to support --it is worse than a large family -- he is silent poor i...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

The universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to discuss the characters of individuals.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

We falsely attribute to men a determined character -- putting together all their yesterdays -- and a...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

If a man constantly aspires is he not elevated?
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Every ambitious would-be empire, clarions it abroad that she is conquering the world to bring it pea...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Seve...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Fame is not just. She never finely or discriminatingly praises, but coarsely hurrahs.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

We must have infinite faith in each other. If we have not, we must never let it leak out that we h...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

It's not enough to be busy. The question is: What are we busy about?
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

People die of fright and live of confidence.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling and spending their l...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

The words which express our faith and piety are not definite; yet they are significant and fragrant ...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

The laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

It is only when we forget out learning that we begin to know.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

What does education often do? It makes a straight cut ditch of a free meandering brook.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

If you give money, spend yourself with it.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently appreciated by mankind.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will ...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

The preachers and lecturers deal with men of straw, as they are men of straw themselves. Why, a free...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

I was once reproved by a minister who was driving a poor beast to some meeting-house horse-sheds amo...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fool...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

There are thousands hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

I would not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked what I thought, and attended to my ...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate pov...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, ...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

The question is not what you look at, but what you see.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so ...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

But man's capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any preceden...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest t...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

It is desirable that a man live in all respects so simply and preparedly that if an enemy take the t...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Life in us is like the water in a river.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Of what significance are the things you can forget.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

The boy gathers materials for a temple, and then when he is thirty, concludes to build a woodshed.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, an they who edit and read it are old women ov...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but ...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Henry David Thoreau

Share:

Related

More Henry David Thoreau