240 [BEST] Henry David Thoreau Quotes (About Nature, Life, Love...)

Henry David Thoreau was an American philosopher, essayist, and poet. He is one of the prominent figures of Transcendentalism in the 19th century. Throughout his life, Thoreau wrote volumes of books, poems, articles, and essays, which have lasting contributions to philosophy and natural history.

Feeling the need to focus on his writing, he lived in a pocket-size business firm he built himself in the woodland near the Walden Swimming shores. Here, Thoreau began writing many of his works, like Walden, and put Transcendentalism into practice.

Merely put, Transcendentalism was an idea that people have an inherent knowledge well-nigh themselves and the world effectually them that "transcends" what they meet, hear, gustation, feel, or bear upon in their daily lives.

Thoreau never married or had any affairs with either man or woman. He was a solitary man who had a few shut friends. One of whom was Ralph Waldo Emerson, some other prominent figure in American Transcendentalism. In addition to this, he was also an environmentalist, a fierce abolitionist, and against the oppression of Native Americans.

Thoreau's writings influenced many keen thinkers and public figures after his death in 1862 at the historic period of 64. The likes of Leo Tolstoy, John Muir, and Martin Luther King Jr. are a few of many who were profoundly influenced by his works.

Find the transcendental mind of Henry David Thoreau through his quotes and sayings that demonstrate his ideas on nature, life, love, friendship, and many more.

Henry David Thoreau Quotes Virtually Nature

1. "Nature is full of genius, total of the divinity; so that non a snowflake escapes its fashioning paw."

2. "Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste matter the heaven also as the earth."

three. "I did non wish to have a cabin passage, just 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 non wish to go below now."

iv. "Nature will conduct the closest inspection. She invites united states of america to lay our centre level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its manifestly."

5. "The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of human or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected."

6. "Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution."

vii. "What is the apply of a firm if y'all haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?"

8. "Nature and man life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another?"

9. "It appears to be a constabulary that y'all cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature."

ten. "To be admitted to Nature's hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push bated the pall."

11. "The bluebird carries the heaven on his back."

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

xiii. "There are certain pursuits which, if non wholly poetic and truthful, practise at least propose a nobler and finer relation to nature than we know. The keeping of bees, for instance."

14. "There is more of good nature than of proficient sense at the bottom of most marriages."

15. "There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the space leisure and repose of nature."

sixteen. "The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, possibly, a palace or temple on the world, and, at length, the eye-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them."

Henry David Thoreau Quotes About Love

one. "Exercise what yous beloved. Know your ain bone; champ at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it however."

2. "Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without."

3. "Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth."

4. "The eye is forever inexperienced."

v. "May nosotros so love every bit never to take occasion to apologize of our honey!"

6. "There is no remedy for dear only to love more."

vii. "Pursue some path, yet narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with dearest and reverence."

Henry David Thoreau Quotes Most Friendship

1. "There is a danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us solitary."

ii. "Friends… they cherish 1 another's hopes. They are kind to one some other's dreams."

three. "The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend."

4. "The linguistic communication of friendship is not words but meanings."

v. "I had three chairs in my house; 1 for confinement, two for friendship, iii for society."

6. "True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance."

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

8. "Be true to your work, your word, and your friend."

Henry David Thoreau Quotes About Solitude

1. "If misery loves company, misery has company enough."

ii. "In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to order."

3. "I love to be lone. I never found the companion that was then companionable equally solitude."

4. "I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet absorber."

5. "I have a great bargain of company in the firm, particularly in the forenoon when nobody calls."

Henry David Thoreau Quotes About Life

i. "If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me proficient, I should run for my life."

2. "Live your life, do your work, and then have your hat."

3. "In that location is always a nowadays and extant life, be it ameliorate or worse, which all combine to uphold."

4. "Never look dorsum unless y'all are planning to go that way."

5. "As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe volition be simpler confinement will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness."

half dozen. "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 finish the regime auto."

7. "Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined."

viii. "Near of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not just not indispensable, merely positive hindrances to the elevation of flesh."

9. "I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable power of man to elevate his life past conscious endeavor."

10. "The toll 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."

11. "I went to the woods because I wished to alive deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and come across if I could not learn what information technology had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

12. "It is never too late to surrender our prejudices."

13. "How could youths better acquire to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?"

14. "There are sometime heads in the world who cannot help me past their example or communication 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."

15. "If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in mutual hours."

16. "Our life is frittered away by particular… simplify, simplify."

17. "Wealth is the power to fully feel life."

18. "At that place is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater role of his life getting his living."

nineteen. "The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for information technology."

20. "If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he volition see with a success unexpected in common hours."

21. "Every creature is better alive than expressionless, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands information technology aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it."

22. "Live the life you've dreamed."

23. "Live your beliefs and you lot can plow the globe around."

24. "A wide margin of leisure is equally beautiful in a human's life as in a volume. Haste makes waste matter, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, non of the cars."

25. "Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake."

26. "Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you lot tin can write will be the best you are."

27. "I have learned, that if i advances confidently in the management of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he volition meet with a success unexpected in common hours."

28. "There is no value in life except what you lot choose to place upon it and no happiness in any identify except what yous bring to information technology yourself."

29. "As y'all simplify your life, the laws of the universe will exist simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness."

30. "I call back that there is zero, non fifty-fifty law-breaking, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this ceaseless business."

31. "You must live in the present, launch yourself on every moving ridge, discover your eternity in each moment."

Henry David Thoreau, More Quotes and Sayings

1. "To have done anything simply for coin is to have been truly idle."

ii. "Information technology is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know."

3. "The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth."

4. "I am sorry to think that you exercise non get a man'southward near effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness."

5. "They can practice without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar."

6. "Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life and so. Aim in a higher place morality. Be non simply proficient be good for something."

seven. "None are so one-time equally those who have outlived enthusiasm."

8. "Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it."

ix. "Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we take no detail verse form to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them."

ten. "If you have built castles in the air, your work demand not exist lost that is where they should be. Now put the foundations nether them."

11. "Information technology is what a human being thinks of himself that really determines his fate."

12. "An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day."

13. "Near men atomic number 82 lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song withal in them."

fourteen. "Men take become the tools of their tools."

fifteen. "Is the babe immature? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man."

16. "More often than not speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: information technology is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling."

17. "Could a greater miracle accept place than for united states to wait through each other's eyes for an instant?"

xviii. "While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not as improved the men who are to inhabit them. Information technology has created palaces, but it was non so easy to create noblemen and kings."

19. "As for doing expert; that is one of the professions which is full. Moreover I accept tried it fairly and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution."

20. "The human who goes solitary tin can start today; merely he who travels with another must await till that other is ready."

21. "Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the truthful place for a just homo is too a prison."

22. "How does information technology become a man to deport towards the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it."

23. "It is not enough to exist busy. And then are the ants. The question is: What are we busy most?"

24. "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is considering he hears a different drummer. Allow him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."

25. "We are not what nosotros are, nor exercise nosotros treat or esteem each other for such, only for what we are capable of being."

26. "Not until nosotros are lost exercise we brainstorm to sympathize ourselves."

27. "Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends… Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts."

28. "The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to usa. Only that 24-hour interval dawns to which we are awake. At that place is more 24-hour interval to dawn. The dominicus is but a morn star."

29. "It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the police force, so much every bit for the right."

30. "Through our ain recovered innocence nosotros discern the innocence of our neighbors."

31. "Faith never makes a confession."

32. "The mass of men pb lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation."

33. "Any fool tin make a dominion, and any fool will mind it."

34. "A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can beget to allow alone."

35. "Dreams are the touchstones of our character."

36. "There is no dominion more than invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspect."

37. "Our inventions are wont to exist pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved terminate."

38. "In that location are onetime heads in the globe who cannot help me past 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 mutual level of my life."

39. "Being is the not bad explainer."

40. "I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the virtually part more lonely when we get abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A homo thinking or working is ever lone, let him be where he will."

41. "What lies behind us and what lies ahead of united states are tiny matters compared to what lives within the states."

42. "If you would convince a homo that he does wrong, practise correct. Men will believe what they see."

43. "What old people say you cannot do, you attempt and notice that you can. Old deeds for quondam people, and new deeds for new."

44. "This globe is merely a sheet to our imagination."

45. "Read the all-time books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all."

46. "Things do not alter; we change."

47. "What you get by achieving your goals is not equally important as what yous become by achieving your goals."

48. "How vain it is to sit down to write when you have non stood up to live."

49. "No face which we can requite to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This lone wears well."

l. "It is best to avert the beginnings of evil."

51. "The homo who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he exercise?"

52. "Defiance is the true foundation of freedom. The obedient must be slaves."

53. "Religion keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not uncertainty, I should not believe."

54. "Great men, unknown to their generation, accept their fame amidst the not bad who accept preceded them, and all true worldly fame subsides from their loftier guess beyond the stars."

55. "The lawyer's truth is not Truth, just consistency or a consequent expediency."

56. "A man's involvement in a single bluebird is worth more than than a complete but dry list of the fauna and flora of a town."

57. "I have been every bit sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks."

58. "Alas! how little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape!"

59. "What is man warfare just just this an endeavor to make the laws of God and nature take sides with ane party."

60. "It takes ii to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear."

61. "Only he is successful in his concern who makes that pursuit which affords him the highest pleasure sustain him."

62. "It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their apparel."

63. "Books can but reveal usa to ourselves, and as frequently as they do us this service we lay them aside."

64. "Some are reputed ill and some are non. It often happens that the sicker man is the nurse to the sounder."

65. "If nosotros volition exist quiet and ready enough, we shall find bounty in every disappointment."

66. "We are always paid for our suspicion past finding what nosotros suspect."

67. "Where there is an observatory and a telescope, we expect that any optics will come across new worlds at once."

68. "The fibers of all things have their tension and are strained like the strings of an instrument."

69. "Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men."

70. "Front yards are not made to walk in, but, at near, through, and you could become in the back way."

71. "To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts."

72. "There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted."

73. "Practise what nobody else tin do for you lot. Omit to do anything else."

74. "To a philosopher all news, equally it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are erstwhile women over their tea."

75. "Goodness is the only investment that never fails."

76. "Truths and roses have thorns nearly them."

77. "I have establish that hollow, which even I had relied on for solid."

78. "The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when ane asked me what I idea, and attended to my answer."

79. "In human intercourse the tragedy begins, non when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is non understood."

80. "Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing."

81. "Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a human being does not continue footstep with his companions, perhaps it is considering he hears a different drummer."

82. "I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not slumber I wrote in the dark."

83. "I have seen how the foundations of the world are laid, and I take not the to the lowest degree doubtfulness that it will stand a practiced while."

84. "Every people have gods to adjust their circumstances."

85. "If it is surely the means to the highest cease nosotros know, tin whatever work be humble or icky? Volition it not rather be elevating equally a ladder, the means by which we are translated?"

86. "We must walk consciously only part mode toward our goal, and then leap in the nighttime to our success."

87. "Distrust any enterprise that requires new dress."

88. "In wilderness is the preservation of the earth."

89. "As for doing good that is i of the professions which is full. Moreover I have tried it adequately and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that information technology does not agree with my constitution."

ninety. "Make the well-nigh of your regrets never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish information technology till information technology comes to take a separate and integral involvement. To regret deeply is to live anew."

91. "Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it."

92. "The linguistic communication of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles."

93. "If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires yous to be the agent of injustice to another, and then, I say, suspension the law."

94. "How many things there are apropos which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them."

95. "What is once well done is done forever."

96. "Equally in geology, so in social institutions, we may observe the causes of all past changes in the nowadays changeless gild of society."

97. "Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve."

98. "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."

99. "Equally a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, and so a single idea will not brand a pathway in the mind. To brand a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, nosotros must retrieve over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to boss our lives."

100. "In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, they had better aim at something high."

101. "We know but a few men, a great many coats and breeches."

102. "Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The 1 melts, the other breaks into pieces."

103. "There is one consolation in existence sick; and that is the possibility that y'all may recover to a better state than you were always in earlier."

104. "God reigns when we take a liberal view, when a liberal view is presented to united states."

105. "The perception of beauty is a moral test."

106. "There never was and is not likely presently to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should exist."

107. "Brand the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, merely tend and cherish information technology till it comes to have a split up and integral involvement. To regret deeply is to live afresh."

108. "The constabulary will never brand a man free; information technology is men who accept got to brand the constabulary free."

109. "All endeavor calls for the ability to tramp the final mile, shape the concluding plan, endure the final hours toil. The fight to the finish spirit is the one… characteristic we must posses if nosotros are to face the future every bit finishers."

110. "As if yous could kill time without injuring eternity."

111. "Every generation laughs at the old fashions, only follows religiously the new."

112. "I say beware of all enterprises that crave new dress, and non rather a new wearer of clothes."

113. "If y'all have built castles in the air, your work need non be lost; that is where they should exist. At present put the foundations under them."

114. "If a man walks in the woods for dearest of them half of each twenty-four hours, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those forest and making the globe bald earlier her time, he is accounted an industrious and enterprising citizen."

115. "Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within yous, opening new channels, not of merchandise, simply of idea."

116. "We should distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes."

117. "Onetime deeds for former people, and new deeds for new."

118. "The police force will never make a man free it is men who have got to brand the law costless."

119. "Though I do non believe that a plant volition spring upwards where no seed has been, I have groovy religion in a seed… Convince me that you lot accept a seed there, and I am prepared to wait wonders."

120. "Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself."

121. "Information technology is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man."

122. "If yous tin can speak what you will never hear, if y'all can write what you lot volition never read, you take done rare things."

123. "All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man."

124. "Information technology is a feature of wisdom not to do desperate things."

125. "Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them."

126. "Aim in a higher place morality. Be not only expert, be adept for something."

127. "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."

128. "Only that mean solar day dawns to which we are awake."

129. "Books are to be distinguished by the grandeur of their topics fifty-fifty more than past the manner in which they are treated."

130. "Time is but the stream I get a-fishing in."

131. "The squirrel that yous kill in jest, dies in hostage."

132. "I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born."

133. "Before printing was discovered, a century was equal to a k years."

134. "Dark is certainly more novel and less profane than day."

135. "I accept thought in that location was some advantage even in death, past which we mingle with the herd of common men."

136. "Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations."

137. "The fell in human being is never quite eradicated."

138. "The mass of men lead lives of tranquillity desperation."

139. "Justice is sweet and musical; simply injustice is harsh and discordant."

140. "It is too belatedly to be studying Hebrew; information technology is more important to understand even the slang of today."

141. "It is normally the imagination that is wounded start, rather than the heart it being much more than sensitive."

142. "What you become by achieving your goals is to as of import equally what you lot become past achieving your goals."

143. "'Tis healthy to be ill sometimes."

144. "Subsequently the first blush of sin comes its indifference."

145. "In the meanest are all the materials of manhood, merely they are not rightly tending."

146. "At that place are a 1000 hacking at the branches of evil to one who is hitting at the root."

147. "Exercise not worry if you have built your castles in the air. They are where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."

148. "All men are children, and of one family. The aforementioned tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the morning."

149. "We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, merely by an infinite expectation of the dawn."

150. "I was more contained than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a firm or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked ane, every moment."

151. "What is called genius is the abundance of life and health."

152. "We shall see merely a fiddling manner if we require to empathise what we meet."

153. "How tin whatever man exist weak who dares to be at all?"

154. "Men are built-in to succeed, non to fail."

155. "A truly good volume teaches me meliorate than to read information technology. I must soon lay information technology downwards, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish past acting."

156. "The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness."

157. "Coin is not required to buy one necessity of the soul."

158. "Not merely must we be good, but we must as well be good for something."

159. "An unclean person is universally a slothful one."

160. "It is amend to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are… than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and call up that you are in paradise."

161. "That government is all-time which governs to the lowest degree."

162. "Heaven is under our anxiety also as over our heads."

163. "There is simply one phase for the peasant and the actor."

164. "Information technology is not part of a true civilization to tame tigers, whatsoever more than it is to make sheep ferocious."

165. "It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the centre; information technology existence much more sensitive."

166. "Information technology is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no reward at all."

167. "The universe is wider than our views of it."

168. "Every human being casts a shadow; not his torso merely, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Allow him turn which way he will, information technology falls reverse to the sun; short at apex, long at eve. Did you never see it?"

169. "If a man constantly aspires is he non elevated?"

170. "It's not what you lot look at that matters, it's what yous run across."

171. "Many men go angling all of their lives without knowing that it is non fish they are after."

172. "There is no just and serene criticism as nevertheless."

173. "That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest."

174. "If I seem to avowal more than than is becoming, my alibi is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself."

If yous'd like to read Henry David Thoreau's works, we recommend you start with his best ane, Walden.

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