Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_David_Thoreau
Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.
Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.
Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.
How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestioned ability of a man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.
I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.
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.
In what concerns you much, do not think that you have companions: know that you are alone in the world.
Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.
I stand in awe of my body.
Men are born to succeed, not fail.
Men have become the tools of their tools.
My friend is one... who take me for what I am.
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
Thank God men cannot as yet fly and lay waste the sky as well as the earth!
That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way.
The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is in prison.
What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?
What people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can.
[Water is] the only drink for a wise man.
Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
It is never too late to give up our prejudices.
He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate.
Man is the artificer of his own happiness.
There is no remedy for love but to love more.
I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.
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.
It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.
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.
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.
Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them.
Things do not change; we change.
Goodness is the only investment that never fails.
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.
The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.
In wildness is the preservation of the world.
Go Confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined.
What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.
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 one's dreams, and endeavors to live the life which one has imagined, one will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.
All good things are wild, and free.
It is pleasant to have been to a place the way a river went.
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink, I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish fill the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet. I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.
What men call good fellowship is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter which lie close together to keep each other warm.
I derive no pleasure from talking with a young woman simply because she has regular features.
As if there were safety in stupidity alone.
Our truest life is when we are in our dreams awake.
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.
Voting for the right is doing nothing for it.
Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. 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.
Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize the infinite extent of our relations.
Men have become the tools of their tools.
However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do want society.
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he imaged, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.
Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.
Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now.
It is characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
There is more religion in men's science, than there is science in their religion.
To regret deeply is to live afresh.
Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.
Good poetry seems too simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.
To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, not even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.
The way by which you may get money almost without exception leads downward.
A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of any prince.
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. It looks poorest when you are the richest.
We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the filed, but not to describe human character.
Must be out-of-doors enough to get experience of wholesome reality, as a ballast to thought and sentiment. Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life
One may discover a new side to his most intimate friend when for the first time he hears him speak in public. He will be stranger to him as he is more familiar to the audience. The longest intimacy could not foretell how he would behave then
We must have infinite faith in each other. If we have not, we must never let it leak out that we have not.
We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.
Most are engaged in business the greater part of their lives, because the soul abhors a vacuum and they have not discovered any continuous employment for man's nobler faculties.
As for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.
Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.
All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy.
I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.
We falsely attribute to men a determined character - putting together all their yesterdays - and averaging them - we presume we know them. Pity the man who has character to support - it is worse than a large family - he is the silent poor indeed.
The man for whom law exists - the man of forms, the Conservative, is a tame man.
It takes two to speak the truth--one to speak and the other to hear.
Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.
Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? 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.
It is never too late to give up your prejudices.
I have learned this at least by my experiment: 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.
It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.
I have lived some thirty years on this planet and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.
In solitude especially do we begin to appreciate the advantage of living with someone who can think.
If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, more elastic, more starry, more immortal--that is your success.
I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that 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. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. 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.
I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.
I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.
A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.
I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion.
I'd rather sit alone on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion.
Many go fishing without knowing it is fish they are after.
Be not simply good - be good for something.
In the long run, you hit only what you aim at: Therefore aim high.
In dreams we see ourselves naked and acting our real characters, even more clearly than we see others awake.
Petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of reality.
Heroes are often the most ordinary of men.
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it but as I drink, I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is.
Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.
Most people dread finding out when they come to die that they have never really lived.