Top 500 Henry David Thoreau Quotes (2023 Update)

1. “All good things are wild and free.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Featured in: Nature Quotes

2. “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you’ve imagined.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Featured in: Inspirational Quotes, Graduation Quotes

3. “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Featured in: Attitude Quotes

4. “Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Featured in: Startup Quotes, Success Quotes

5. “Life isn’t about finding yourself; it’s about creating yourself. So live the life you imagined.”

— Henry David Thoreau

6. “Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.”

— Henry David Thoreau

7. “Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.”

— Henry David Thoreau

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8. “Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”

— Henry David Thoreau

9. “This world is but a canvas for our imagination.”

— Henry David Thoreau

10. “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Featured in: Quotes About Songs

11. “You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.”

— Henry David Thoreau

12. “As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.”

— Henry David Thoreau

13. “You cannot dream yourself into a character: you must hammer and forge yourself into one.”

— Henry David Thoreau

14. “I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that 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.”

— Henry David Thoreau

15. “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”

— Henry David Thoreau

16. “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”

— Henry David Thoreau

17. “The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”

— Henry David Thoreau

18. “What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.”

— Henry David Thoreau

19. “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

— Henry David Thoreau

20. “We are constantly invited to be who we are.”

— Henry David Thoreau

21. “Goodness is the only investment that never fails.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Featured in: Integrity Quotes

22. “We are born as innocents. We are polluted by advice.”

— Henry David Thoreau

23. “A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.”

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

25. “The path of least resistance leads to crooked rivers and crooked men.”

— Henry David Thoreau

26. “Think for yourself, or others will think for you without thinking of you.”

— Henry David Thoreau

27. “An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Featured in: Good Morning Quotes

28. “That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest. ”

— Henry David Thoreau

29. “Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Featured in: Travel Quotes, Character Quotes

30. “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.”

— Henry David Thoreau

31. “Enthusiasm is a supernatural serenity.”

— Henry David Thoreau

32. “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.”

— Henry David Thoreau

33. “In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, they had better aim at something high.”

— Henry David Thoreau

34. “A lake is a landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.”

— Henry David Thoreau

35. “It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?”

— Henry David Thoreau

36. “There is no remedy for love, but to love more.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Featured in: Marriage Quotes

37. “Thought is the sculptor who can create the person you want to be.”

— Henry David Thoreau

38. “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.”

— Henry David Thoreau

39. “My greatest skill in life has been to want but little.”

— Henry David Thoreau

40. “Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.”

— Henry David Thoreau

41. “Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.”

— Henry David Thoreau

42. “What's the use of a fine house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?”

— Henry David Thoreau

43. “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.”

— Henry David Thoreau

44. “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.”

— Henry David Thoreau

45. “The heart is forever inexperienced.”

— Henry David Thoreau

46. “I make myself rich by making my wants few.”

— Henry David Thoreau

47. “The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.”

— Henry David Thoreau

48. “Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.”

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

50. “When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality.”

— Henry David Thoreau