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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

“I hear beyond the range of sound,
I see beyond the range of sight,
New earths and skies and seas around,
And in my day the sun doth pale his light.”

Henry David Thoreau

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

Light , Sun , Sea

“The unconsciousness of man is the consciousness of God.”

Henry David Thoreau

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

God

“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
Men , Justice , Understanding

“Our legislators have not yet learned the comparative value of free-trade and of freedom, of union, and of rectitude, to a nation. They have no genius or talent for comparatively humble questions of taxation and finance, commerce and manufacturers and agriculture. ”

Henry David Thoreau
Question , Freedom , Learning

“The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse. If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)

Money , Way , Cheating

“The only government that I recognize—and it matters not how few are at the head of it, or how small its army — is that power that establishes justice in the land, never that which establishes injustice.”

Henry David Thoreau book A Plea for Captain John Brown

A Plea for Captain John Brown (1859)

Justice

“I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will… The really diligent student… is as solitary as a dervish in the desert. The farmer can work alone in the field or the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome…”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Walden (1854)

Time , Making love , Thinking , Solitude

“Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth.”

Henry David Thoreau

"Natural History of Massachusetts" , The Dial (1842) https://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/thoreau/nathist.html

Truth , Flowers

“The only way to tell the truth is to speak with kindness. Only the words of a loving man can be heard.”

Henry David Thoreau
Truth , Way , Love

“If a man loses 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 book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Walden

Music

“Men and boys are learning all kinds of trades but how to make men of themselves. They learn to make houses; but they are not so well housed, they are not so contented in their houses, as the woodchucks in their holes. What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?”

Henry David Thoreau

If you cannot tolerate the planet that it is on? Grade the ground first. If a man believes and expects great things of himself, it makes no odds where you put him, or what you show him ... he will be surrounded by grandeur. He is in the condition of a healthy and hungry man, who says to himself, — How sweet this crust is!
Letter to Harrison Blake (20 May 1860); published in Familiar Letters (1865)

Housing , Boy , Learning , Men