Henry David Thoreau Sayings and Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old Henry David Thoreau quotes, Henry David Thoreau sayings, and Henry David Thoreau proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.'

It is pleasant to walk over the beds of these fresh, crisp, and rustling leaves. How beautifully they go to their graves! How gently lay themselves down and turn to mould!—painted of a thousand hues, and fit to make the beds of the living. So they troop to their last resting-place, light and frisky. Henry David Thoreau
How much beauty in decay! I pick up a white oak leaf, dry and stiff, but yet mingled red and green, October-like, whose pulpy part some insect has eaten beneath, exposing the delicate network of its veins. Henry David Thoreau
He who passes over a lake at noon, when the waves run, little imagines its serene and placid beauty at evening, as little as he anticipates his own serenity. Henry David Thoreau
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life. Henry David Thoreau
Every tree sends its fibres forth in search of the Wild. The cities import it at any price. Men plow and sail for it. From the forest and wilderness come the tonics and barks which brace mankind. Henry David Thoreau
I thrive best on solitude. If I have had a companion only one day in a week, unless it were one or two I could name, I find that the value of the week to me has been seriously affected. It dissipates my days, and often it takes me another week to get over it. Henry David Thoreau
As if there were safety in stupidity alone. Henry David Thoreau
Be true to your work your word and your friend. Henry David Thoreau
It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things. Henry David Thoreau
Our last deed, like the young of the land crab, wends its way to the sea of cause and effect as soon as born, and makes a drop there to eternity. Henry David Thoreau
An early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day. Henry David Thoreau
All things in this world must be seen with the morning dew of them, must be seen with youthful, early open, hopeful eyes. Henry David Thoreau
I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion. Henry David Thoreau
It is not enough to be a hardworking person. Equally important is the job you are working at. Henry David Thoreau
Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain. Henry David Thoreau
The whole tree itself is but one leaf, and rivers are still vaster leaves whose pulp is intervening earth, and towns and cities are the ova of insects in their axils. Henry David Thoreau
There is only one path to Heaven. On Earth, we call it Love. Henry David Thoreau
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads. Henry David Thoreau
It is for man the seasons and all their fruits exist. The winter was made to concentrate and harden and mature the kernel of his brain, to give tone and firmness and consistency to his thought. Then is the great harvest of the year, the harvest of thought. Henry David Thoreau
Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes. Henry David Thoreau
I live in the present. I only remember the past, and anticipate the future. Henry David Thoreau
I believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the night in which the corn grows. Henry David Thoreau
I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. Henry David Thoreau
There are none happy in the world but beings who enjoy freely a vast horizon. Henry David Thoreau
The fire is the main comfort of the camp, whether in summer or winter. Henry David Thoreau
What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate. Henry David Thoreau
Men die of fright and live of confidence. Henry David Thoreau
Be yourself not your idea of what you think somebody else's idea of yourself should be. Henry David Thoreau
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. Henry David Thoreau
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. Henry David Thoreau