Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Quotes

• Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

• My friend is one... who take me for what I am.

• I stand in awe of my body.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

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

• Do what nobody else can do for you. Omit to do anything else.

• How sweet it would be to treat men and things, for an hour, for just what they are!

• Say what you have to say, not what you ought. any truth is better than make-Believe!

• Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.

• I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

• Cultivate the habit of early rising. It is unwise to keep the head long on a level with the feet.

• I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, cattle, barns, and farming tools, for these are more easily acquired than gotten rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labour in.

• The hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men.

• I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake his neighbours up.

• The only obligation which I have a right to assume, is to do at any time what I think right.

• In the long run you only hit what you aim at. Therefore, though you should fail immediately, you had better aim at something high.

• Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!