Famous Quotes

Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

• I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.
• I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.
• I had three chairs in my house one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.
• I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls.
• I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
• 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.
• I have seen how the foundations of the world are laid, and I have not the least doubt that it will stand a good while.
• I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we mingle with the herd of common men.
• I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.
• I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
• I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.
• I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
• If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
• If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.
• 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.
• If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are translated?
• If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
• If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.
• If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.
• If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
• If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.
• Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without.
• In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society.
• In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, they had better aim at something high.
• Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men.
• It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.
• It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
• It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.