Quotes from Henry David Thoreau

This world is but canvas to our imaginations.

Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.

I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the wisest thinks he must attend to in a day; how singular an affair he thinks he must omit. When the mathematician would solve a difficult problem, he first frees the equation of all incumbrances, and reduces it to its simplest terms. So simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real. Probe the earth to see where your main roots run.

It is never too late to give up your prejudices

The preachers and lecturers deal with men of straw, as they are men of straw themselves. Why, a free-spoken man, of sound lungs, cannot draw a long breath without causing your rotten institutions to come toppling down by the vacuum he makes. Your church is a baby-house made of blocks, and so of the state. ...The church, the state, the school, the magazine, think they are liberal and free! It is the freedom of a prison-yard.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

It is not worth the while to let our imperfections disturb us always.

for my greatest skill has been to want but little.

I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings.

Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.

The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend.

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will believe what they see. Let them see.

Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

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. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple-tree or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer?

I can alter my life by altering my attitude. He who would have nothing to do with thorns must never attempt to gather flowers.

It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?

Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.