Top 500 Henry David Thoreau Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “I would remind my countrymen that they are to be men first, and Americans only at a late and convenient hour.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

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

— Henry David Thoreau

253. “Where the most beautiful wild flowers grow, there mans spirit is fed and poets grow.”

— Henry David Thoreau

254. “On tops of mountains, as everywhere to hopeful souls, it is always morning.”

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

Featured in: Intelligence Quotes

256. “For an impenetrable shield, stand inside yourself.”

— Henry David Thoreau

257. “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

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

— Henry David Thoreau

259. “It is the marriage of the soul with nature that makes the intellect fruitful, and gives birth to imagination.”

— Henry David Thoreau

260. “Don’t get to the end of your life and realize you have never lived.”

— Henry David Thoreau

261. “The only people who ever get anyplace interesting are the people who get lost.”

— Henry David Thoreau

262. “The stars are the jewels of the night, and perchance surpass anything which day has to show.”

— Henry David Thoreau

263. “Music is the sound of the universal laws promulgated. It is the only assured tone. There are in it such strains as far surpass anyman’s faith in the loftiness of his destiny. Things are to be learned which it will be worth the while to learn.”

— Henry David Thoreau

264. “If Nature is our mother, then God is our father.”

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

266. “He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul’s estate.”

— Henry David Thoreau

267. “There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hand. I love a broad margin to my life.”

— Henry David Thoreau

268. “The world is a strange place for a playhouse to stand within it.”

— Henry David Thoreau

269. “Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other breaks into pieces.”

— Henry David Thoreau

270. “In what concerns you much, do not think that you have companions: know that you are alone in the world.”

— Henry David Thoreau

271. “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

272. “To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.”

— Henry David Thoreau

273. “The best way to correct a mistake is to make it right.”

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

275. “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

Featured in: Simplicity Quotes

276. “When I consider how, after sunset, the stars come out gradually in troops from behind the hills and woods, I confess that I could not have contrived a more curious and inspiring sight.”

— Henry David Thoreau

277. “I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise til noon, rapt in a revery.”

— Henry David Thoreau

278. “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

279. “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

280. “I stand in awe of my body.”

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

283. “If misery loves company, misery has company enough.”

— Henry David Thoreau

284. “Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows.”

— Henry David Thoreau

285. “You think that I am impoverishing myself withdrawing from men, but in my solitude I have woven for myself a silken web or chrysalis, and, nymph-like, shall ere long burst forth a more perfect creature, fitted for a higher society.”

— Henry David Thoreau

286. “Good for the body is the work of the body, good for the soul the work of the soul, and good for either the work of the other.”

— Henry David Thoreau

287. “When a man truly commits, the universe will conspire to assure his success.”

— Henry David Thoreau

288. “In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad-Gita, in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seems puny and trivial.”

— Henry David Thoreau

289. “Art is not tame, and Nature is not wild, in the ordinary sense. A perfect work of man’s art would also be wild or natural in a good sense.”

— Henry David Thoreau

290. “It is a great art to saunter !”

— Henry David Thoreau

291. “As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind.”

— Henry David Thoreau

292. “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

293. “The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness.”

— Henry David Thoreau

294. “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

295. “Writing your name can lead to writing sentences. And the next thing you’ll be doing is writing paragraphs, and then books. And then you’ll be in as much trouble as I am!”

— Henry David Thoreau

Featured in: Book Quotes

296. “The keeping of bees is like the direction of sunbeams.”

— Henry David Thoreau

297. “Friends are made for caring and sharing. Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody.”

— Henry David Thoreau

298. “The only wealth is life.”

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

300. “While England endeavors to cure the potato-rot, will not any endeavor to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so much more widely and fatally?”

— Henry David Thoreau