Quotes from Henry David Thoreau

The way you spend Christmas is far more important than how much.

I have found it a singular luxury to talk across the pond to a companion on the opposite side.

We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.

Our manners have been corrupted by communication with the saints.

What lies before us and what lies behind us are small matters compared to what lies within us. And when we bring what is within out into the world, miracles happen.

Keep up the fires of thought, and all will go well.

My enemies are worms, cool days, and most of all woodchucks.

Where there is a brave man in the thickest of the fight there is the post of honor.

We are ever dying to one world and being born into another.

Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.

Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.

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

A friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us. The friend asks no return but that his friend will religiously accept and wear and not disgrace his apotheosis of him. They cherish each other's hopes. They are kind to each other's dreams.

True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.

I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude

If a man does not keep 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.

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?

Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends... Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams.

The monument of death will outlast the memory of the dead. The Pyramids do not tell the tale which was confided to them; the living fact commemorates itself.

Oh to reach the point of death and realize one has not lived at all.

Every sunset I witness inspires me with the desire to go to West as distant and as fair as that which the sun goes down. Eastward I go only by force; but westward I go free.

I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals.

We never conceive the greatness of our fates.