Top 500 Henry David Thoreau Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “I do not judge men by anything they can do. Their greatest deed is the impression they make on me.”

— Henry David Thoreau

102. “On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend’s life also, in our own, to the world.”

— Henry David Thoreau

103. “When it’s time to die, let us not discover that we have never lived.”

— Henry David Thoreau

104. “There is no history of how bad became better.”

— Henry David Thoreau

105. “The soul grows by subtraction, not addition.”

— Henry David Thoreau

106. “Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.”

— Henry David Thoreau

107. “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.”

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

109. “Rise free from care before the dawn and seek adventure. Let the noon find you by other lakes, and the night overtake thee everywhere at home. There are no larger fields than these, no worthier games than may here be played.”

— Henry David Thoreau

110. “All endeavour calls for the ability to tramp the last mile, shape the last plan, endure the last hours toil.”

— Henry David Thoreau

111. “I am grateful for what I have. My thanksgiving is perpetual.”

— Henry David Thoreau

112. “Morning glory is the best name, it always refreshes me to see it.”

— Henry David Thoreau

113. “The devil finds work for idle hands.”

— Henry David Thoreau

114. “I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.”

— Henry David Thoreau

115. “Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. Why, nature is but another name for health.”

— Henry David Thoreau

116. “The question is not what you look at – but how you look, and whether you see.”

— Henry David Thoreau

117. “Do not lose hold of your dreams or aspirations. For if you do, you may still exist but you have ceased to live.”

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

119. “Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage.”

— Henry David Thoreau

120. “In wildness is the preservation of the world.”

— Henry David Thoreau

121. “Anyone in a free society where the laws are unjust has an obligation to break the law.”

— Henry David Thoreau

122. “When any real progress is made, we unlearned and learn anew what we thought we knew before.”

— Henry David Thoreau

123. “Behave so the aroma of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere.”

— Henry David Thoreau

124. “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately...”

— Henry David Thoreau

125. “A man may acquire a taste for wine or brandy, and so lose his love for water, but should we not pity him.”

— Henry David Thoreau

126. “Every blade in the field – Every leaf in the forest – lays down its life in its season as beautifully as it was taken up.”

— Henry David Thoreau

127. “One is not born into the world to do everything but to do something.”

— Henry David Thoreau

128. “We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.”

— Henry David Thoreau

129. “Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.”

— Henry David Thoreau

130. “I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.”

— Henry David Thoreau

131. “Wherever you may seek solitude, men will ferret you out and compel you to belong to their desperate company of oddfellows.”

— Henry David Thoreau

132. “I am struck by the fact that the more slowly trees grow at first, the sounder they are at the core, and I think that the same is true of human beings.”

— Henry David Thoreau

133. “There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.”

— Henry David Thoreau

134. “Men have become the tools of their tools.”

— Henry David Thoreau

135. “To be awake is to be alive.”

— Henry David Thoreau

136. “I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.”

— Henry David Thoreau

137. “How can we remember our ignorance, which our growth requires, when we are using our knowledge all the time?”

— Henry David Thoreau

138. “To inherit property is not to be born – it is to be still-born, rather.”

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

140. “You must not only aim right, but draw the bow with all your might.”

— Henry David Thoreau

141. “Don’t be afraid that your life will end, be afraid that it will never begin!”

— Henry David Thoreau

142. “Every oak tree started out as a couple of nuts who stood their ground.”

— Henry David Thoreau

143. “To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.”

— Henry David Thoreau

144. “The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.”

— Henry David Thoreau

145. “Winter is the time for study, you know, and the colder it is the more studious we are.”

— Henry David Thoreau

146. “The future is too soon the past. So make perseverance your excellence and go confidently in the direction of your dreams.”

— Henry David Thoreau

147. “I have no time to be in a hurry.”

— Henry David Thoreau

148. “Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures.”

— Henry David Thoreau

149. “The fault finder will find faults even in paradise and thereby miss the joys that recognition of the positives bring.”

— Henry David Thoreau

150. “A man’s wealth is measured by what he doesn’t need.”

— Henry David Thoreau