Henry David Thoreau Quotes
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251. “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

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

— Henry David Thoreau

253. “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

254. “Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.”

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

258. “I am resolved that I will not through humility become the devil’s attorney. I will endeavor to speak a good word for the truth.”

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

260. “It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.”

— Henry David Thoreau

261. “I have no designs on society, or nature, or God. I am simply what I am, or I begin to be that. I live in the present. I only remember the past, and anticipate the future. I love to live.”

— Henry David Thoreau

262. “All change is a miracle to contemplate, but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.”

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

265. “Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.”

— Henry David Thoreau

266. “Wherever you have planted a seed, I am prepared to expect wonders.”

— Henry David Thoreau

267. “The faultfinder will find faults even in paradise.”

— Henry David Thoreau

268. “Time is like a handful of sand – the tighter you grasp it, the faster it runs through your fingers.”

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

271. “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

272. “A name pronounced is the recognition of the individual to whom it belongs. He who can pronounce my name aright, he can call me, and is entitled to my love and service.”

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

274. “As I love nature, as I love singing birds, and gleaming stubble, and flowing rivers, and morning and evening, and summer and winter, I love thee, my Friend.”

— Henry David Thoreau

275. “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

276. “One should be always on the trail of one’s own deepest nature. For it is the fearless living out of your own essential nature that connects you to the Divine.”

— Henry David Thoreau

277. “I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home. I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful.”

— Henry David Thoreau

278. “All misfortune is but a stepping stone to fortune.”

— Henry David Thoreau

279. “Sincerity is a great but rare virtue, and we pardon to it much complaining, and the betrayal of many weaknesses.”

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

283. “The Library is a wilderness of books.”

— Henry David Thoreau

284. “It is what a man thinks of himself that really determines his fate.”

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

286. “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

287. “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

288. “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

289. “Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve.”

— Henry David Thoreau

290. “I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.”

— Henry David Thoreau

291. “We can never have enough of Nature.”

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

293. “We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.”

— Henry David Thoreau

294. “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

295. “Perfect sincerity and transparency make a great part of beauty, as in dewdrops, lakes, and diamonds.”

— Henry David Thoreau

296. “Simplicity is the peak of civilization.”

— 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. “Truths and roses have thorns about them.”

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

300. “Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.”

— Henry David Thoreau