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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
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385 Quotes to Embrace the Present Moment and Lead a Meaningful Life

Get inspired by Henry David Thoreau's profound insights on love, success, friendship, and living authentically, as his timeless quotes encourage embracing the present moment and pursuing dreams confidently. Dive into his powerful philosophy to lead a more meaningful life.

Henry David Thoreau was an influential American naturalist, philosopher, poet, and essayist. He is most renowned for his book Walden, which explores the idea of simple living in harmony with nature. Thoreau also wrote "Civil Disobedience," a persuasive argument advocating for acts of civil disobedience against unjust government actions.

Thoreau's body of work includes over 20 volumes consisting of books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry. His writings on natural history and philosophy were ahead of their time and laid the groundwork for modern-day environmentalism. Thoreau's writing style combines meticulous observation of nature with personal experiences, powerful rhetoric, symbolic meanings, and historical knowledge. He possessed a poetic sensibility and pragmatic attention to detail. Furthermore, he explored themes of survival in challenging circumstances while promoting the abandonment of wastefulness and illusions to uncover life's true necessities.

In addition to his literary contributions, Thoreau was an active abolitionist who delivered lectures criticizing slavery and defending prominent abolitionists such as John Brown. His philosophy of civil disobedience would later influence major figures like Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. Some even identify Thoreau as an anarchist due to his belief in limited government intervention. Regardless of pronunciation debates surrounding his name, Thoreau remains a influential figure in American literature and social thought.

✵ 12. July 1817 – 6. May 1862  •  Other names Henry Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau photo
Henry David Thoreau: 385 quotes96 likes

Henry David Thoreau Quotes

“Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

“This curious world we inhabit is more wonderful than convenient; more beautiful than it is useful; it is more to be admired and enjoyed than used.”

Henry David Thoreau

“if i repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. what demon possessed me that i behaved so well?”

Henry David Thoreau

“A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts. We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us.”

Henry David Thoreau

Source: Walden, or Life in the Woods

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

“Life in us is like the water in a river.”

Henry David Thoreau

“It is desirable that a man live in all respects so simply and preparedly that if an enemy take the town… he can walk out the gate empty-handed and without anxiety.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

“Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

“Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

“If you want to be happy, be!”

Henry David Thoreau

“In the long run men only hit what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high.”

Henry David Thoreau

“Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Variant: I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.
Source: Walden

“All change is a miracle to contemplate, but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

“While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them”

Henry David Thoreau

Source: Where I Lived, and What I Lived For

“The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait until that other is ready, and it may be a long time before they get off.”

Henry David Thoreau

“In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

“What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.”

Henry David Thoreau

Original from Zig Ziglar https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Zig_Ziglar <br class="br">Misattributed

“The whole course of human history may depend on a change of heart in a single, solitary, even humble individual. For it is within the soul of the individual that the battle between good and evil is waged and ultimately won or lost.”

Henry David Thoreau

“I do not know how to distinguish between waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?”

Henry David Thoreau

“There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.”

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 seed. Convince me that you have a seed
there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.”

Henry David Thoreau

“Confucius said, "To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

“The greatest art is to shape the quality of the day.”

Henry David Thoreau

“Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden (1854)

“Love must be as much a light as it is a flame.”

Henry David Thoreau

“The true harvest of my life is intangible - a little star dust caught, a portion of the rainbow I have clutched.”

Henry David Thoreau

“Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion.”

Henry David Thoreau

Source: Walden and Other Writings

“I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)
Context: I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living. All great enterprises are self-supporting. The poet, for instance, must sustain his body by his poetry, as a steam planing-mill feeds its boilers with the shavings it makes. You must get your living by loving.

“A gun gives you the body, not the bird.”

Henry David Thoreau

Quoted by Ralph Waldo Emerson in Talks with Ralph Waldo Emerson http://books.google.com/books?id=IhA6AQAAIAAJ&amp;q=%22A+gun+he+said+gives+you+the+body+not+the+bird%22&amp;pg=PA86#v=onepage (1890) by Charles Johnson Woodbury

“Man wanted a home, a place for warmth, or comfort, first of physical warmth, then the warmth of the affections.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

“Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one.”

Henry David Thoreau book Civil Disobedience

Source: Civil Disobedience (1849)

“I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both. I love the wild not less than the good.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

“What people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can.”

Henry David Thoreau

Variant: What people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can.

“As long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

“The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. I have no wealth to bestow on him. If he knows that I am happy in loving him, he will want no other reward. Is not friendship divine in this?”

Henry David Thoreau

“Comparatively, tattooing is not the hideous custom which it is called. It is not barbarous merely because the printing is skin-deep and unalterable.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

“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

“Goodness is the only investment that never fails.”

Henry David Thoreau

“A man can suffocate on courtesy.”

Henry David Thoreau

“Read not the Times, read the Eternities.”

Henry David Thoreau