Quotes from Henry David Thoreau

Faint heart never won true friend. O my friend, may it come to pass, once, that when you are my friend I may be yours.

Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody.

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.

Good poetry seems too simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.

Government never furthered any enterprise but the alacrity with which it got out of the way.

Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his friends for his life.

Heroes are often the most ordinary of men.

How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual friends, that we may go and meet their ideal cousins.

However mean your life is, meet and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is.

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.

Life should begin with age and its privileges and accumulations, and end with youth and its capacity to splendidly enjoy such advantages.

Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.

Make the most of your regrets. . . . To regret deeply is to live afresh.

Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.

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.

Most people dread finding out when they come to die that they have never really lived.

Must be out-of-doors enough to get experience of wholesome reality, as a ballast to thought and sentiment. Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life

My friend is one... who take me for what I am.

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice.

No one is so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.

Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize the infinite extent of our relations.

One may discover a new side to his most intimate friend when for the first time he hears him speak in public. He will be stranger to him as he is more familiar to the audience. The longest intimacy could not foretell how he would behave then.

Our truest life is when we are in our dreams awake.

Sobriety, severity, and self-respect are the foundations of all true sociality.