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Henry David Thoreau

141 quotes

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) was an American essayist, poet, and philosopher best known for his book *Walden*, a reflection on simple living in natural surroundings. A leading transcendentalist, Thoreau championed individualism, civil disobedience, and a deep reverence for nature that continues to influence environmentalists and free thinkers to this day.

“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.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Life

All Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

“Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?”

— Henry David Thoreau

Great

“All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Wisdom

“As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Society

“They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Architecture

“Things do not change we change.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Change

“There is always a present and extant life, be it better or worse, which all combine to uphold.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Life

“Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Religion

“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.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Good

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Men

“Faith never makes a confession.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Faith

“To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Life

“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

Nature

“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.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Love

“'Tis healthy to be sick sometimes.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Health

“Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Environmental

“Make the most of your regrets never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Sad

“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.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Dreams

“We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Success

“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

Music

“There are certain pursuits which, if not wholly poetic and true, do at least suggest a nobler and finer relation to nature than we know. The keeping of bees, for instance.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Nature