Top 500 Henry David Thoreau Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “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

302. “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

303. “I will come to you, my friend, when I no longer need you. Then you will find a palace, not an almshouse.”

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

306. “Surely joy is the condition of life.”

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

309. “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

310. “I was determined to know beans.”

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

312. “One is wise to cultivate the tree that bears fruit in our soul.”

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

314. “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

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

— Henry David Thoreau

316. “There is no beginning too small.”

— Henry David Thoreau

317. “We should come home from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day with new experience and character.”

— Henry David Thoreau

318. “The cart before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful.”

— Henry David Thoreau

319. “I was not born to be forced.”

— Henry David Thoreau

320. “I live in the present. I only remember the past, and anticipate the future.”

— Henry David Thoreau

321. “Endeavor to live the life you have imagined.”

— Henry David Thoreau

322. “The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.”

— Henry David Thoreau

323. “Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity is open.”

— Henry David Thoreau

324. “Cowards suffer, heroes enjoy.”

— Henry David Thoreau

325. “Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house.”

— Henry David Thoreau

326. “Really to see the sun rise or go down every day, so to relate ourselves to a universal fact, would preserve us sane forever.”

— Henry David Thoreau

327. “Love is no individual’s experience; and though we are imperfect mediums, it does not partake of our imperfection; though we are finite, it is infinite and eternal...”

— Henry David Thoreau

328. “Be wary of technology; it is often merely an improved means to an unimproved end.”

— Henry David Thoreau

329. “Death is beautiful when seen to be a law, and not an accident. It is as common as life.”

— Henry David Thoreau

330. “I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute Freedom and Wildness, as contrasted with a Freedom and Culture merely civil, – to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society.”

— Henry David Thoreau

331. “One generation abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels.”

— Henry David Thoreau

332. “Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights.”

— Henry David Thoreau

333. “Resign yourself to the influence of the earth.”

— Henry David Thoreau

334. “One must maintain a little bittle of summer, even in the middle of winter.”

— Henry David Thoreau

335. “If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.”

— Henry David Thoreau

336. “I can alter my life by altering my attitude. He who would have nothing to do with thorns must never attempt to gather flowers.”

— Henry David Thoreau

337. “Dissent without action is consent.”

— Henry David Thoreau

338. “Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.”

— Henry David Thoreau

339. “Wherever there is a channel for water, there is a road for the canoe.”

— Henry David Thoreau

340. “Simplicity is the peak of civilization.”

— Henry David Thoreau

341. “The nonchalance and dolce-far-niente air of nature and society hint at infinite periods in the progress of mankind.”

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

344. “Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him.”

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

346. “We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bone.”

— Henry David Thoreau

347. “Men talk of freedom! How many are free to think? Free from fear, from perturbation, from prejudice? Nine hundred and ninety-nine in a thousand are perfect slaves.”

— Henry David Thoreau

348. “Birds never sing in caves.”

— Henry David Thoreau

349. “Every man has to learn the points of the compass again as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction.”

— Henry David Thoreau

350. “Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and Spring.”

— Henry David Thoreau