A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
Henry David Thoreau
Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.
Henry David Thoreau
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
Henry David Thoreau
Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.
Henry David Thoreau
Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. 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
Cultivate the habit of early rising. It is unwise to keep the head long on a level with the feet.
Henry David Thoreau
Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.
Henry David Thoreau
Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.
Henry David Thoreau
Every man is the builder of a temple called his body.
Henry David Thoreau
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.
Henry David Thoreau
He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate.
Henry David Thoreau
How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
Henry David Thoreau
However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do want society.
Henry David Thoreau
I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestioned ability of a man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.
Henry David Thoreau
I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.
Henry David Thoreau
I stand in awe of my body.
Henry David Thoreau
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
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
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
If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.
Henry David Thoreau
In what concerns you much, do not think that you have companions: know that you are alone in the world.
Henry David Thoreau
In wildness is the preservation of the world.
Henry David Thoreau
It is as hard to see one's self as to look backwards without turning around.
Henry David Thoreau
It is never too late to give up your prejudices.
Henry David Thoreau
Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.
Henry David Thoreau
Men are born to succeed, not fail.
Henry David Thoreau
Men have become the tools of their tools.
Henry David Thoreau
Most are engaged in business the greater part of their lives, because the soul abhors a vacuum and they have not discovered any continuous employment for man's nobler faculties.
Henry David Thoreau
My friend is one... who take me for what I am.
Henry David Thoreau
Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.
Henry David Thoreau
Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.
Henry David Thoreau
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
Henry David Thoreau
Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.
Henry David Thoreau
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
Henry David Thoreau
Thank God men cannot as yet fly and lay waste the sky as well as the earth!
Henry David Thoreau
That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
Henry David Thoreau
The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way.
Henry David Thoreau
The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.
Henry David Thoreau
To regret deeply is to live afresh.
Henry David Thoreau
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is in prison.
Henry David Thoreau
We must have infinite faith in each other. If we have not, we must never let it leak out that we have not.
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
What people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can.
Henry David Thoreau
When a dog runs at you, whistle for him.
Henry David Thoreau
[Water is] the only drink for a wise man.
Henry David Thoreau
Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.
Henry David Thoreau, "Walden", 1854
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
Henry David Thoreau, "Walden", 1854
It is never too late to give up our prejudices.
Henry David Thoreau, 'Economy,' Walden, 1854
But government in which the majority rule in all cases can not be based on justice, even as far as men understand it.
Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate.
Henry David Thoreau, Journal, February 11, 1840
Man is the artificer of his own happiness.
Henry David Thoreau, Journal, January 21, 1838
There is no remedy for love but to love more.
Henry David Thoreau, Journal, July 25, 1839
Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
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, Walden
When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
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, Walden (1854)
Things do not change; we change.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1970)
I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854
It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854
The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Chapter 1: Economy
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, Walden, Conclusion, 1854
Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Economy, 1854
Goodness is the only investment that never fails.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Higher Laws, 1854
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Reading, 1854
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