Henry David Thoreau Quotes
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201. “Nothing can be more useful to you than a determination not to be hurried.”

— Henry David Thoreau

202. “In the long run, we only hit what we aim at.”

— Henry David Thoreau

203. “What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.”

— Henry David Thoreau

204. “Men are born to succeed, not to fail.”

— Henry David Thoreau

205. “Everyone must believe in something. I believe I’ll go canoeing.”

— Henry David Thoreau

206. “I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board.”

— Henry David Thoreau

207. “Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.”

— Henry David Thoreau

208. “Love must be as much a light as it is a flame.”

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

210. “Nature is slow, but sure; she works no faster than need be; she is the tortoise that wins the race by her perseverance.”

— Henry David Thoreau

211. “With all your science can you tell me how it is, and when it is, that light comes into the soul?”

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

213. “I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one.”

— Henry David Thoreau

214. “That aim in life is highest which requires the highest and finest discipline.”

— Henry David Thoreau

215. “The violence of love is as much to be dreaded as that of hate.”

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

217. “The best thing a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those schemes which he entertained when he was poor.”

— Henry David Thoreau

218. “The most difficult thing to understand during conversation is silence.”

— Henry David Thoreau

219. “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.”

— Henry David Thoreau

220. “The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.”

— Henry David Thoreau

221. “In the winter, warmth stands for all virtue.”

— Henry David Thoreau

222. “However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are.”

— Henry David Thoreau

223. “Renew thyself completely each day.”

— Henry David Thoreau

224. “O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it, for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment.”

— Henry David Thoreau

225. “The bluebird carries the sky on his back.”

— Henry David Thoreau

226. “Steady labor with the hands, which engrosses the attention also, is unquestionably the best method of removing palaver and sentimentality out of one’s style, both of speaking and writing.”

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

228. “The kind uncles and aunts of the race are more esteemed than its true spiritual fathers and mothers.”

— Henry David Thoreau

229. “I would remind my countrymen that they are to be men first, and Americans only at a late and convenient hour.”

— Henry David Thoreau

230. “The highest that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence.”

— Henry David Thoreau

231. “Kindness to children, love for children, goodness to children – these are the only investments that never fail.”

— Henry David Thoreau

232. “Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry.”

— Henry David Thoreau

233. “I am struck by the simplicity of light in the atmosphere in the autumn, as if the earth absorbed none, and out of this profusion of dazzling light came the autumnal tints.”

— Henry David Thoreau

234. “Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.”

— Henry David Thoreau

235. “To have made even one person’s life a little better, that is to succeed.”

— Henry David Thoreau

236. “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail.”

— Henry David Thoreau

237. “Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.”

— Henry David Thoreau

238. “I had but three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship; three for society. When visitors came in larger and unexpected numbers there was but the third chair for them all, but they generally economized the room by standing up.”

— Henry David Thoreau

239. “Such is beauty ever,-neither here nor there, now nor then,-neither in Rome nor in Athens, but wherever there is a soul to admire.”

— Henry David Thoreau

240. “The eye is the jewel of the body.”

— Henry David Thoreau

241. “The secret of achievement is to hold a picture of a successful outcome in mind.”

— Henry David Thoreau

242. “When a dog runs at you, whistle for him.”

— Henry David Thoreau

243. “If I am not I, who will be?”

— Henry David Thoreau

244. “We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor.”

— Henry David Thoreau

245. “He who hears the rippling of rivers in these degenerate days will not utterly despair.”

— Henry David Thoreau

246. “Nature abhors a vacuum, and if I can only walk with sufficient carelessness I am sure to be filled.”

— Henry David Thoreau

247. “I also have in mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters.”

— Henry David Thoreau

248. “The only sin in the world is ignorance.”

— Henry David Thoreau

249. “Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.”

— Henry David Thoreau

250. “As if there were safety in stupidity alone.”

— Henry David Thoreau