250 Thoreau Quotes: Powerful Lines on Life & Nature

This collection gathers 250 of his most memorable lines — drawn verbatim from Walden, “Civil Disobedience,” “Walking,” “Life Without Principle,” his journals, and his letters — with the source noted for each. From simplicity and solitude to wildness and waking up, these are Thoreau’s own words, exactly as he wrote them.

On Simplicity & Living Deliberately

1. 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, Walden
2. Simplify, simplify. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
3. The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
4. 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, Walden
5. 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. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
6. Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
7. However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
8. It is never too late to give up our prejudices. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
9. In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
10. 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. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
11. As if you could kill time without injuring eternity. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
12. The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
13. Men have become the tools of their tools. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
14. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
15. I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
16. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
17. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
18. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
19. Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
20. I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
21. Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
22. 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 my neighbors up. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
23. Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
24. I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
25. I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
26. Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
27. Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
28. Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
29. 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. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
30. To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
31. We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
32. Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
33. I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one’s self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
34. Our life is frittered away by detail. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden

On Nature & the Wild

1. In Wildness is the preservation of the World. — Henry David Thoreau, Walking
2. We need the tonic of wildness — to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
3. I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least — and it is commonly more than that — sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements. — Henry David Thoreau, Walking
4. An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day. — Henry David Thoreau, Journal, 20 April 1840
5. Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow. — Henry David Thoreau, Journal, 19 August 1851
6. Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth. — Henry David Thoreau, Journal, 23 August 1853
7. What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on? — Henry David Thoreau, Letter to H.G.O. Blake, 20 May 1860
8. The question is not what you look at, but what you see. — Henry David Thoreau, Journal, 5 August 1851
9. All good things are wild and free. — Henry David Thoreau, Walking
10. The bluebird carries the sky on his back. — Henry David Thoreau, Journal, 3 April 1852
11. 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, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal — that is your success. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
12. Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself? — Henry David Thoreau, Journal, 21 August 1851
13. The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
14. I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright. — Henry David Thoreau, Journal, 7 July 1851
15. We can never have enough of nature. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
16. 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. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
17. The indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature — of sun and wind and rain, of summer and winter — such health, such cheer, they afford forever! — Henry David Thoreau, Journal, 7 January 1857
18. A written word is the choicest of relics. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
19. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society. — Henry David Thoreau, Journal, 22 June 1851
20. I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks — who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering. — Henry David Thoreau, Walking
21. The walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise, as it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated hours. — Henry David Thoreau, Walking
22. Above all, we cannot afford not to live in the present. — Henry David Thoreau, Letter to H.G.O. Blake, 27 March 1848
23. The perception of beauty is a moral test. — Henry David Thoreau, Journal, 6 June 1852
24. There is just as much beauty visible to us in the landscape as we are prepared to appreciate, and not a grain more. — Henry David Thoreau, Journal, 5 May 1841
25. No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
26. What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
27. Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
28. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
29. The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden

On Conscience & Civil Disobedience

1. I heartily accept the motto, ‘That government is best which governs least’; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. — Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
2. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. — Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
3. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. — Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
4. Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one. — Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
5. There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. — Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
6. The rich man is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. — Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
7. It is not a man’s duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him. — Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
8. If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth — certainly the machine will wear out. — Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
9. The lawyer’s truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency. — Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
10. I do not hesitate to say, that those who call themselves Abolitionists should at once effectually withdraw their support, both in person and property, from the government of Massachusetts. — Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
11. Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? — Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
12. Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. — Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
13. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. — Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
14. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. — Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
15. A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences. — Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
16. The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. — Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
17. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones. — Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
18. If we were left solely to the wordy wit of legislators in Congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonable experience and the effectual complaints of the people, America would not long retain her rank among the nations. — Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
19. Those who, while they disapprove of the character and measures of a government, yield to it their allegiance and support are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters. — Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
20. There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them. — Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
21. It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. — Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
22. Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice. — Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
23. If one were to tell me that this was a bad government because it taxed certain foreign commodities brought to its ports, it is most probable that I should not make an ado about it, for I can do without them. — Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
24. The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it. — Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
25. Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience? — Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
26. I have never declined paying the highway tax, because I am as desirous of being a good neighbor as I am of being a bad subject. — Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
27. Under the name of Order and Civil Government, we are all made at last to pay homage to and support our own meanness. — Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
28. It costs me less in every sense to incur the penalty of disobedience to the State than it would to obey. — Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

On Wealth, Work & Success

1. Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
2. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
3. A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
4. I make myself rich by making my wants few. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
5. The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
6. Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
7. If I were to preach, I should preach the love of money and the love of the world as the root of all evil. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
8. If a man walk 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 whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. — Henry David Thoreau, Life Without Principle
9. The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get ‘a good job,’ but to perform well a certain work. — Henry David Thoreau, Life Without Principle
10. We seem to have forgotten that the expression ‘a liberal education’ originally meant among the Romans one worthy of freemen. — Henry David Thoreau, Life Without Principle
11. Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still. — Henry David Thoreau, Letter to H.G.O. Blake, 27 March 1848
12. Be not simply good; be good for something. — Henry David Thoreau, Letter to H.G.O. Blake, 27 March 1848
13. Aim above morality. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
14. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
15. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
16. The world is but a canvas to our imagination. — Henry David Thoreau, Journal, 19 March 1842
17. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
18. America is said to be the arena on which the battle of freedom is to be fought; but surely it cannot be freedom in a merely political sense that is meant. — Henry David Thoreau, Life Without Principle

On Morning, Time & Presence

1. The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
2. Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
3. We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
4. You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
5. God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
6. In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
7. I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. — Henry David Thoreau, Journal, 2 July 1841
8. The sun is but a morning star. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
9. I have learned that the swiftest traveller is he that goes afoot. — Henry David Thoreau, Journal, 19 August 1852
10. The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them. — Henry David Thoreau, Journal, 11 November 1851
11. I desire that there may be as many different persons in the world as possible; but I would have each one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden

On Friendship & Love

1. There is no remedy for love but to love more. — Henry David Thoreau, Journal
2. Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes. — Henry David Thoreau, Letter to H.G.O. Blake
3. I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
4. As for Doing-good, that is one of the professions which are full. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
5. There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
6. If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
7. The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
8. 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 than I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden

On Solitude & the Self

1. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
2. I am no more lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden Pond itself. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
3. I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
4. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
5. Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
6. I have a great deal of company in my house; especially in the morning, when nobody calls. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
7. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face? — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
8. What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
9. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
10. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true today may turn out to be falsehood tomorrow, mere smoke of opinion. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
11. The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secret of things. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
12. The heart is forever inexperienced. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
13. Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
14. 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. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
15. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
16. The life in us is like the water in the river. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
17. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
18. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
19. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
20. The universe is wider than our views of it. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
21. I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
22. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
23. It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
24. I have travelled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
25. The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in comparison with those which my neighbors have undertaken. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
26. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
27. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
28. 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. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
29. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor 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. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
30. My instinct tells me that my head is an organ for burrowing, as some creatures use their snout and fore paws, and with it I would mine and burrow my way through these hills. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
31. I think the richest vein is somewhere hereabouts; by this divining-rod the ore is always found, and the further we go the richer it will be. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden

On Books & Learning

1. Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
2. How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
3. The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
4. To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
5. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
6. The works of the great poets have never yet been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
7. A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
8. We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests; as, for instance, that the same sun which ripens my beans illumines at once a system of earths like ours. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
9. The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
10. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
11. It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
12. Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
13. We are made to exaggerate the importance of what work we do; and yet how much is not done by us! — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
14. I have always endeavored to acquire strict business habits; they are indispensable to every man. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
15. There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
16. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
17. I also have in mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
18. If I should attempt to tell how I have desired to spend my life in years past, it would probably surprise those of my readers who are somewhat acquainted with its actual history. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
19. It would be some advantage to live a primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
20. The frontiers are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man fronts a fact. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
21. Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden

On Journals & Observation

1. How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. — Henry David Thoreau, Journal
2. My Journal is that of me which would else spill over and run to waste. — Henry David Thoreau, Journal
3. All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy. — Henry David Thoreau, Journal
4. I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another. — Henry David Thoreau, Journal
5. Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence. — Henry David Thoreau, Journal
6. If you would get exercise, go in search of the springs of life. — Henry David Thoreau, Journal
7. Think of our life in nature, — daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it, — rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! The actual world! The common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? Where are we? — Henry David Thoreau, Journal
8. When I would recreate myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most interminable and, to the citizen, most dismal swamp. — Henry David Thoreau, Journal
9. I enter a swamp as a sacred place, a sanctum sanctorum. — Henry David Thoreau, Journal
10. Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps. — Henry David Thoreau, Journal
11. I love the wild not less than the good. — Henry David Thoreau, Journal
12. We must go out and re-ally ourselves to Nature every day. — Henry David Thoreau, Journal
13. I am sorry to think that you do not get a man’s most effective criticism until you provoke him. — Henry David Thoreau, Letter
14. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness. — Henry David Thoreau, Letter

On Walking & the Wild

1. Give me the ocean, the desert, or the wilderness! — Henry David Thoreau, Walking
2. Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. — Henry David Thoreau, Walking
3. The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild. — Henry David Thoreau, Walking
4. Here is this vast, savage, hovering mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard. — Henry David Thoreau, Walking
5. In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line. — Henry David Thoreau, Walking
6. You must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast which ruminates when walking. — Henry David Thoreau, Walking
7. When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods: what would become of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall? — Henry David Thoreau, Walking
8. Every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels. — Henry David Thoreau, Walking
9. So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light. — Henry David Thoreau, Walking
10. Nowadays almost all man’s improvements, so called, as the building of houses and the cutting down of the forest and of all large trees, simply deform the landscape, and make it more and more tame and cheap. — Henry David Thoreau, Walking
11. A town is saved, not more by the righteous men in it than by the woods and swamps that surround it. — Henry David Thoreau, Walking
12. We go eastward to realize history and study the works of art and literature, retracing the steps of the race; we go westward as into the future, with a spirit of enterprise and adventure. — Henry David Thoreau, Walking
13. The Atlantic is a Lethean stream, in our passage over which we have had an opportunity to forget the Old World and its institutions. — Henry David Thoreau, Walking

On the Ponds & Village Life

1. I am thankful that this pond was made deep and pure for a symbol. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
2. A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
3. It is earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
4. Sky water. It needs no fence. Nations come and go without defiling it. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
5. The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
6. Olympus is but the outside of the earth everywhere. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
7. The echo is, to some extent, an original sound, and therein is the magic and charm of it. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
8. All sound heard at the greatest possible distance produces one and the same effect, a vibration of the universal lyre. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
9. What was the meaning of this so steady and self-respecting, this small Herculean labor, I knew not. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
10. It was a singular experience that long acquaintance which I cultivated with beans, hoeing them from June to September. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
11. I was determined to know beans. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
12. By the words, necessary of life, I mean whatever, of all that man obtains by his own exertions, has been from the first, or from long use has become, so important to human life that few, if any, whether from savageness, or poverty, or philosophy, ever attempt to do without. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
13. None of the brute creation requires more than Food and Shelter. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
14. Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
15. The cart before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
16. Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must be stripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living be laid for a foundation. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
17. There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dullness. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
18. Hardly a man takes a half-hour’s nap after dinner, but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, ‘What’s the news?’ as if men had never known that there were no news. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
19. The nation itself, with all its so-called internal improvements, which, by the way, are all external and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown establishment. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
20. We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
21. Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
22. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
23. We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
24. As with our colleges, so with a hundred ‘modern improvements’; there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
25. Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
26. Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
27. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
28. Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
29. He has no time to be anything but a machine. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
30. How can he remember well his ignorance — which his growth requires — who has so often to use his knowledge? — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
31. I cannot believe that our factory system is the best mode by which men may get clothing. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
32. I would not have any one adopt my mode of living on any account; for, beside that before he has fairly learned it I may have found out another for myself. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden

On Conclusions & Experiments

1. Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
2. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
3. I am a parcel of vain strivings tied by a chance bond together. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
4. I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle-dove, and am still on their trail. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
5. There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
6. Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
7. If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
8. Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
9. 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. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
10. Instead of studying how to make it worth men’s while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
11. If a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as the man is dead-and-gone to begin with. — Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Henry David Thoreau?

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) was an American essayist, poet, philosopher, naturalist, and abolitionist — a leading figure of transcendentalism alongside his mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson. He is best known for Walden (1854), his account of two years living simply in a cabin at Walden Pond, and “Civil Disobedience” (1849), his essay arguing that individuals must follow conscience over unjust laws.

What is Thoreau’s most famous quote?

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately” — the opening of Walden’s “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For” — is his most quoted line. Close behind are “Simplify, simplify,” “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” and “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.”

What is Walden about?

Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854) is Thoreau’s first-person account of the two years, two months, and two days he spent in a cabin he built himself at Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts. Part memoir, part natural history, part philosophical treatise, it is a practical and spiritual argument for simplicity, self-reliance, attentiveness, and living “deliberately” — and a critique of a society he saw as obsessed with needless labor and luxury.

What did Thoreau mean by civil disobedience?

In “Civil Disobedience” (1849), written after spending a night in jail for refusing to pay a poll tax that funded the Mexican-American War and slavery, Thoreau argued that no one should resign conscience to the state: “Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator?” He held that a just person breaks unjust laws — peacefully accepting the penalty — and that “that government is best which governs least.”

More Wisdom to Explore

• Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes from Thoreau’s mentor and fellow transcendentalist
• Jane Austen quotes on wit, love and society
• Winnie the Pooh quotes full of gentle wisdom
• Theodore Roosevelt quotes on courage and action
• Emily Dickinson quotes on hope and eternity
• Robert Frost quotes on nature and choices
• Mark Twain quotes on wit and American life
• Khalil Gibran quotes on love and spirituality
• Oscar Wilde quotes on wit and art
• Maya Angelou quotes on courage and dignity
• Confucius quotes on wisdom and virtue
• Seneca quotes on stoicism and time
• Oprah Winfrey quotes on purpose and gratitude
• Albert Einstein quotes on imagination and science