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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   quotes 94   likes

Henry David Thoreau Quotes

“If a thousand [citizens] were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.”

Henry David Thoreau book Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience (1849)

“While there are manners and compliments we do not meet, we do not teach one another the lessons of honesty and sincerity that the brutes do, or of steadiness and solidity that the rocks do. The fault is commonly mutual, however; for we do not habitually demand any more of each other.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)

Sincerity

“Here while I lie beneath this walnut bough,
What care I for the Greeks or for Troy town,
If juster battles are enacted now
Between the ants upon this hummock's crown?”

Henry David Thoreau

The Summer Rain, st. 3

Lie

“Men rush to California and Australia as if the true gold were to be found in that direction; but that is to go to the very opposite extreme to where it lies. They go prospecting farther and farther away from the true lead, and are most unfortunate when they think themselves most successful.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)

Men , Thinking , Success

“That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another's. We see so much only as we possess.”

Henry David Thoreau

June 22, 1839
Journals (1838-1859)

“I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.”

Henry David Thoreau book Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience (1849)

World

“The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual.”

Henry David Thoreau book Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience (1849)

Democracy

“Some old poet's grand imagination is imposed on us as adamantine everlasting truth, and God's own word! Pythagoras says, truly enough, "A true assertion respecting God, is an assertion of God"; but we may well doubt if there is any example of this in literature.”

Henry David Thoreau

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Sunday

God , Truth , Imagination , Literature

“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.”

Henry David Thoreau

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Wednesday

Water , Time

“Perhaps I am more than usually jealous with respect to my freedom. I feel that my connection with and obligation to society are still very slight and transient. Those slight labors which afford me a livelihood, and by which it is allowed that I am to some extent serviceable to my contemporaries, are as yet commonly a pleasure to me, and I am not often reminded that they are a necessity. So far I am successful. But I foresee, that, if my wants should be much increased, the labor required to supply them would become a drudgery. If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure, that, for me, there would be nothing left worth living for. I trust that I shall never thus sell my birthright for a mess of pottage.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)

Pleasure , Feeling , Freedom , Appearance

“The rush to California, for instance, and the attitude, not merely of merchants, but of philosophers and prophets, so called, in relation to it, reflect the greatest disgrace on mankind. That so many are ready to live by luck, and so get the means of commanding the labor of others less lucky, without contributing any value to society!”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)

“None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Walden (1854)

Life

“I take it for granted, when I am invited to lecture anywhere, — for I have had a little experience in that business, — that there is a desire to hear what I think on some subject, though I may be the greatest fool in the country, — and not that I should say pleasant things merely, or such as the audience will assent to; and I resolve, accordingly, that I will give them a strong dose of myself. They have sent for me, and engaged to pay for me, and I am determined that they shall have me, though I bore them beyond all precedent.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)

Fools , Business , Thinking , Strong

“Truths and roses have thorns about them.”

Henry David Thoreau

This is commonly misattributed because Thoreau wrote it in his journal June 14, 1838, but it was not original. This was a popular aphorism in his day, appearing in several collections of proverbs during his lifetime. Its origin is unknown, but it had appeared in print before his birth. E.g., in Joseph Dennie and Asbury Dickins, The Port Folio, vol.2, no.1 (July 1809) http://books.google.com/books?id=YrIRAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA431, p. 431; and in Felipe Fernandez, Exercises on the rules of construction of the Spanish language http://books.google.com/books?id=LMIBAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA228, 3rd ed. (1811), p. 228.
Misattributed

Truth

“A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the State with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated by it as enemies.”

Henry David Thoreau book Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience (1849)

Men , Sense , Parting

“Friends — They are like air bubbles on water, hastening to flow together. History tells of Orestes and Pylades, Damon and Pythias, but why should not we put to shame those old reserved worthies by a community of such? Constantly, as it were through a remote skylight, I have glimpses of a serene friendship-land, and know the better why brooks murmur and violets grow. This conjunction of souls, like waves which met and break, subsides also backward over things, and gives all a fresh aspect. I would live henceforth with some gentle soul such a life as may be conceived, double for variety, single for harmony — two, only that we might admire at our oneness — one, because indivisible. Such community to be a pledge of holy living. How could aught unworthy be admitted into our society? To listen with one ear to each summer sound, to behold with one eye each summer scene, our visual rays so to meet and mingle with the object as to be one bent and doubled; with two tongues to be wearied, and thought to spring ceaselessly from a double fountain.”

Henry David Thoreau

January 26, 1840
Journals (1838-1859)

Life , Friendship , Soul , History

“We may well be ashamed to tell what things we have read or heard in our day. I do not know why my news should be so trivial, — considering what one's dreams and expectations are, why the developments should be so paltry. The news we hear, for the most part, is not news to our genius. It is the stalest repetition.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)

Dreams , Reading , Parting

“A poem is one undivided unimpeded expression fallen ripe into literature, and it is undividedly and unimpededly received by those for whom it was matured.”

Henry David Thoreau

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Thursday

Literature

“Every poet has trembled on the verge of science.”

Henry David Thoreau

July 18, 1852
Journals (1838-1859)

Science

“Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walking

Walking (June 1862)

Life

“Even the death of Friends will inspire us as much as their lives. They will leave consolation to the mourners, as the rich leave money to defray the expenses of their funerals, and their memories will be incrusted over with sublime and pleasing thoughts, as monuments of other men are overgrown with moss; for our Friends have no place in the graveyard.”

Henry David Thoreau

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Wednesday

Death , Men , Money , Memory

“Happiness is like a butterfly: the more you chase it, the more it will elude you. But if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.”

Henry David Thoreau

According to The Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/04/17/butterfly/, "the earliest instance of this saying was crafted by the enigmatic “L” for “The Daily Crescent” newspaper in New Orleans [in June 1848]. ... The linkage to Henry David Thoreau is unsupported."
Misattributed

Motivational , Deep , Happy , Inspirational

“One cannot too soon forget his errors and misdemeanors. To dwell long upon them is to add to the offense. Repentance and sorrow can only be displaced by something better, which is as free and original as if they had not been.”

Henry David Thoreau

January 9, 1842
Journals (1838-1859)

Error , Forgetting

“The commonest and cheapest sounds, as the barking of a dog, produce the same effect on fresh and healthy ears that the rarest music does. It depends on your appetite for sound. Just as a crust is sweeter to a healthy appetite than confectionery to a pampered or diseased one.”

Henry David Thoreau

December 27, 1857
Journals (1838-1859)

Disease , Dogs , Music , Dependency

“Most men would feel insulted, if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)

Men , Feeling

“We are as much as we see. Faith is sight and knowledge. The hands only serve the eyes.”

Henry David Thoreau

April 9, 1841
Journals (1838-1859)

Faith , Knowledge

“Who could believe in prophecies of Daniel or of Miller that the world would end this summer, while one milkweed with faith matured its seeds?”

Henry David Thoreau

The Dispersion of Seeds (1993)

World , Faith , Summer

“Great God, I ask thee for no meaner pelf
Than that I may not disappoint myself,
That in my action I may soar as high
As I can now discern with this clear eye.”

Henry David Thoreau

Prayer http://www.walden.org/Institute/thoreau/writings/poetry/Great%20God.htm, st. 1 (1842)

God , Disappointment

“For eighteen hundred years, though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written; yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of legislation?”

Henry David Thoreau book Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience (1849)

Wisdom , Light , Science

“They who know of no purer sources of truth, who have traced up its stream no higher, stand, and wisely stand, by the Bible and the Constitution, and drink at it there with reverence and humility; but they who behold where it comes trickling into this lake or that pool, gird up their loins once more, and continue their pilgrimage toward its fountain-head.”

Henry David Thoreau book Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience (1849)

Truth , Drink

“Nothing is so much to be feared as fear. Atheism may comparatively be popular with God himself.”

Henry David Thoreau

September 7, 1851
Journals (1838-1859)

God , Fear

“The same law that shapes the earth-star shapes the snow-star. As surely as the petals of a flower are fixed, each of these countless snow-stars comes whirling to earth…these glorious spangles, the sweeping of heaven's floor.”

Henry David Thoreau

January 5, 1856
Journals (1838-1859)

Law , Star , Flowers

“In our science and philosophy, even, there is commonly no true and absolute account of things. The spirit of sect and bigotry has planted its hoof amid the stars. You have only to discuss the problem, whether the stars are inhabited or not, in order to discover it.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)

Star , Problem , Science

“She with one breath attunes the spheres,
And also my poor human heart.”

Henry David Thoreau

Inspiration, Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900

Heart

“The vessel, though her masts be firm,
Beneath her copper bears a worm.”

Henry David Thoreau

Monday, Though All the Fates Should Prove Unkind, st. 2
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Monday

“My books I'd fain cast off, I cannot read,
'Twixt every page my thoughts go stray at large
Down in the meadow, where is richer feed,
And will not mind to hit their proper targe.”

Henry David Thoreau

The Summer Rain http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poet=6711&poem=31808, st. 1 (1842)

Books , Reading

“Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.”

Henry David Thoreau

November 11, 1854
Referring to an 1849 dairyman's strike, during which there was suspicion of milk being watered down
Journals (1838-1859)
Variant: Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.

Strong

“I speak for the slave when I say that I prefer the philanthropy of Captain Brown to that philanthropy which neither shoots me nor liberates me.”

Henry David Thoreau book A Plea for Captain John Brown

A Plea for Captain John Brown (1859)

“The eye may see for the hand, but not for the mind.”

Henry David Thoreau

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Friday

“The New Testament is an invaluable book, though I confess to having been slightly prejudiced against it in my very early days by the church and the Sabbath school, so that it seemed, before I read it, to be the yellowest book in the catalogue. Yet I early escaped from their meshes. It was hard to get the commentaries out of one's head and taste its true flavor. — I think that Pilgrim's Progress is the best sermon which has been preached from this text; almost all other sermons that I have heard, or heard of, have been but poor imitations of this.”

Henry David Thoreau

It would be a poor story to be prejudiced against the Life of Christ because the book has been edited by Christians.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Sunday

Life , Books , School , Thinking

“No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America. They are rare in the history of the world. There are orators, politicians, and eloquent men, by the thousand; but the speaker has not yet opened his mouth to speak who is capable of settling the much-vexed questions of the day.”

Henry David Thoreau book Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience (1849)

Men , World , History , Question

“My life has been the poem I would have writ,
But I could not both live and utter it.”

Henry David Thoreau

My Life Has Been a Poem I Would Have Writ
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Friday

Life

“There are other letters for the child to learn than those which Cadmus invented.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walking

Walking (June 1862)

Learning

“Go where we will on the surface of things, men have been there before us.”

Henry David Thoreau

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Thursday

Men

“I am as desirous of being a good neighbor as I am of being a bad subject.”

Henry David Thoreau book Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience (1849)

“How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today? I answered that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.”

Henry David Thoreau book Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience (1849)

“And now, at half-past ten o'clock, I hear the cockerels crow in Hubbard's barns, and morning is already anticipated. It is the feathered, wakeful thought in us that anticipates the following day.”

Henry David Thoreau

July 11, 1851
Journals (1838-1859)

Past

“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”

Henry David Thoreau

Misquotation of a line from Walden cited above, with the addition of a spurious ending. For this and other misattributions, see: The Henry D. Thoreau Mis-Quotation Page http://www.walden.org/thoreau/mis-quotations/
Misattributed

Men

“Talk of mysteries! — Think of our life in nature, — daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it, — rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?”

Henry David Thoreau

The Maine Woods http://thoreau.eserver.org/mewoods.html, Ktaadn, Pt. 6 (1848)

Life , World , Nature , Thinking