Henry David Thoreau Quotes

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

“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.”

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

“To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake.”

“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.”

“The keeping of bees is like the direction of sunbeams.”

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

“Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day.”

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

“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.”

“Be resolutely and faithfully what you are; be humbly what you aspire to be.”

“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.”

“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.”

“If you want to be happy, be!”

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

“Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.”

“As to conforming outwardly and living your own life inwardly, I do not think much of that.”

“Enthusiasm is a supernatural serenity.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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?”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise.”

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

“In the long run, we only hit what we aim at.”

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

“Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.”

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

“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.”

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

“No man ever followed his genius til it misled him.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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?”

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

“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.”

“Goodness is the only investment that never fails.”

“A man can suffocate on courtesy.”

“Read not the Times, read the Eternities.”