Explore Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Every man is the builder of a temple called his body.

A man can suffocate on courtesy.

There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dullness.

be yourself- not your idea of what you think somebody else's idea of yourself should be.

We are born as innocents. We are polluted by advice.

You boast of spending a tenth part of your income in charity; may be you should spend the nine tenths so, and done with it.

A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips; -- not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself.

You must converse much with the field and the woods if you would imbibe such health into your mind and spirit as you covet for your body

One is not born into the world to do everything but to do something.

Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmie that he can? Let everyone mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made

A bore is someone who takes away my solitude and doesn't give me companionship in return.

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.

We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.

Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.

No man ever followed his genius till it misled him.

The path of least resistance leads to crooked rivers and crooked men.

To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what the clocks say or the attitudes and labors of men. Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail.

Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.

Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost.

He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise.