Quotes by Henry David Thoreau
It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.
Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.
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.
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.
Be not simply good - be good for something.
Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams.
It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
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.
None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
As if we could kill time without injuring eternity!
Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.
The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.
I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.
There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.
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.
I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.
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.
If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself.
The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.
The fibers of all things have their tension and are strained like the strings of an instrument.
If misery loves company, misery has company enough.
Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.
