Quotes from Henry David Thoreau

Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.

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

I make myself rich by making my wants few.

Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society.

What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.

Renew thyself completely each day.

I heartily accept the motto, That government is best which governs least; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe — That government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.

Happiness is like a butterfly, the more you chase it, the more it will evade you, but if you notice the other things around you, it will gently come and sit on your shoulder.

What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.

It is not that we love to be alone, but that we love to soar, and when we do soar, the company grows thinner and thinner until there is none at all. …We are not the less to aim at the summits though the multitude does not ascend them.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.

This curious world we inhabit is more wonderful than convenient; more beautiful than it is useful; it is more to be admired and enjoyed than used.

The heart is forever inexperienced.

In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood

The keeping of bees is like the direction of sunbeams.

A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts. We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us.

Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then.

The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man's abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.

Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.

And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter, - we need never read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications?

Simplify, simplify.

To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake.

Be resolutely and faithfully what you are; be humbly what you aspire to be.