Let us get to know Henry David Thoreau through his own words . . .
“Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?” -Henry David Thoreau
“It is not worth while to go around the world to count the cats in Zanzibar.” -Henry David Thoreau: “Walden” (1854)
“The bluebird carries the sky on his back.” -Henry David Thoreau: “Journals” (1838 - 1859), ‘3 April 1852’
Henry David Thoreau was born on 12 July 1817 in Concord, Massachusetts, United States of America. He is remembered as an essayist, a poet, a naturalist, a transcendentalist, and a practical philosopher.
“An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.” -Henry David Thoreau
“Pursue, keep up with, circle round and round your life, as a dog does his master’s chaise. Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.” -Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau, the writer of the book “Walden” (1854), was a pencil-maker by trade. Of course, as everyone knows, if you allow a person to have a pencil, the next thing he or she might very well do is to start using it to put words on paper.
“Writing your name can lead to writing sentences. And the next thing you’ll be doing is writing paragraphs, and then books. And then you’ll be in as much trouble as I am!” -Henry David Thoreau
“I know of no more encouraging fact than the ability of a man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.” -Henry David Thoreau: “Walden, or Life in the Woods”
“Almost all wild apples are handsome. They cannot be too gnarly and crabbed and rusty to look at. The gnarliest will have some redeeming traits even to the eye.” -Henry David Thoreau: “Wild Apples”
“It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?” -Henry David Thoreau: letter (16 November 1857) to Harrison Gray Otis Blake
“If a man constantly aspires, is he not elevated?” -Henry David Thoreau
“I was never unusually squeamish; I could sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish, if it was necessary.” -Henry David Thoreau
“Water is the only drink for a wise man.” -Henry David Thoreau
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.” -Henry David Thoreau: “Walden” (1854), chapter I, ‘Economy’
“Nowadays most men lead lives of noisy desperation.” -James Thurber (1894 - 1961): “Fables for Our Time” (1940)
“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 or been awarded.” -Henry David Thoreau
“It is characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.” -Henry David Thoreau
“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.” -Henry David Thoreau
“It is as hard to see one’s self as to look backwards without turning around.” -Henry David Thoreau
“Our life is frittered away by detail . . . Simplify, simplify.” -Henry David Thoreau: “Walden” (1854)
“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” -Henry David Thoreau: as attributed in “Locomotive Engineers Journal” (1942), Volume 76, page 711
“The secret of achievement is to hold a picture of a successful outcome in the mind.” -Henry David Thoreau
“If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will believe what they see. Let them see.” -Henry David Thoreau
“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
“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” -Henry David Thoreau
“As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.” -Henry David Thoreau: “Walden” (1854), ‘Economy’
“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” -Henry David Thoreau (similar quotation attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson)
“I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.” -Henry David Thoreau
“I am grateful for what I am and have. My Thanksgiving is perpetual.” -Henry David Thoreau: letter (6 December 1856) to Harrison Gray Otis Blake, as published in “The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau” (1958), page 444
“I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits unless I spend four hours a day at least . . . sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements.” -Henry David Thoreau
“I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other.” -Henry David Thoreau: “Walden” (1854)
“The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness.” -Henry David Thoreau
“A single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.” -Henry David Thoreau
“I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.” -Henry David Thoreau
“What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.” -Henry David Thoreau (similar quotation attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
“Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.” -Henry David Thoreau
“Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.” -Henry David Thoreau
“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.” -Henry David Thoreau
“All good things are wild and free.” -Henry David Thoreau
“The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man’s adobe; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.” -Henry David Thoreau
“I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.” -Henry David Thoreau
“We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.” -Henry David Thoreau
“Men are born to succeed, not to fail.” -Henry David Thoreau
“Thoreau wants a little ambition in his mixture. Fault of this, instead of being the head of American Engineers, he is captain of a huckleberry party.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson: as quoted in Lawrence Rosenwald, editor: “Selected Journals 1841 - 1877” (2010), page 557
“When were the good and the brave ever in a majority?” -Henry Thoreau
“All misfortune is but a stepping stone to fortune.” -Henry David Thoreau
“Every child begins the world again.” -Henry David Thoreau
“Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.” -Henry David Thoreau
“None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.” -Henry David Thoreau: as attributed in Kate Sanborn: “A Year of Sunshine” (1886)
“Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.” -Henry David Thoreau
“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: “The Main Woods” (1848), ‘Chesuncook’
“Man is the artificer* of his own happiness.” -Henry David Thoreau
*artificer: maker
“We live but a fraction of our lives.” -Henry David Thoreau
“There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.” -Henry David Thoreau
“When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.” -Henry David Thoreau
“There is no remedy for love but to love more.” -Henry David Thoreau
“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” -Henry David Thoreau: “Journals” (1838 - 1859), ’19 August 1851’
“Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.” -Henry David Thoreau (similar quotation attributed to Nathaniel Hawthorne)
“Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.” -Henry David Thoreau
“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” -Henry David Thoreau: “Walden” (1854)
“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. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty, poverty, nor weakness, weakness. 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” (1854), ‘Conclusion’
“Nothing is so much to be feared as fear.” -Henry David Thoreau: “Journals” (1838 - 1859), ‘7 September 1851’
“Live your life as though every act were to become a universal law.” -Henry David Thoreau
“What lies before us and what lies behind us . . . are small matters compared to what lies within us . . . and when we bring what lies within into the world . . . miracles happen!” -Henry David Thoreau: as attributed in Dan Millman: “The Life You Were Born to Live” (1995), page xi (similar quotation attributed to Henry Stanley Haskins)
“Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.” -Henry David Thoreau
“Be yourself - not your idea of what you think somebody else’s idea of yourself should be.” -Henry David Thoreau
“Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.” -Henry David Thoreau
“The man who goes alone can start today. But he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.” -Henry David Thoreau
“‘Hear! hear!’ screamed the jay from a neighboring tree, where I had heard a tittering for some time, ‘winter has a concentrated and nutty kernel, if you know where to look for it.’” -Henry David Thoreau: journal entry on 28 November 1858
“Who hears the rippling of rivers will not utterly despair of anything.” -Henry David Thoreau
“Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.” -Henry David Thoreau: “Walden” (1854)
“Many men go fishing all their lives not knowing it is not fish they are after.” -Henry David Thoreau
“Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.” -Henry David Thoreau: “Walden” (1854)
“A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is the earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.” -Henry David Thoreau
Any fool can make a rule,
And any fool will mind it.
-Henry David Thoreau: “Journals” (1838 - 1859), ‘3 February 1860’
“Goodness is the only investment that never fails.” -Henry David Thoreau: “Walden” (1854), ‘Higher Laws’
“Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.” -Henry David Thoreau: “Life Without Principle” (1863)
“This world is but a canvas to our imagination.” -Henry David Thoreau: “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers” (1849), ‘Wednesday’
“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” (1854), chapter 18
“I like the story about Henry David Thoreau, who, when he was on his deathbed, his family sent for a minister. The minister said, ‘Henry, have you made your peace with God?’ Thoreau said, ‘I didn’t know we’d quarreled.’” -Stewart Udall
Henry David Thoreau passed on at 44 years of age on 6 May 1862 in Concord, Massachusetts, United States of America, succumbing to the then-common condition tuberculosis. His thoughts live on in books, and are scattered across the internet like brilliantly colored wildflowers growing in a vast prairie.
“Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.” -Henry David Thoreau
“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.” -Henry David Thoreau: “Walden” (1854), ‘Conclusion’
This is MFOL! . . . doing the best with what we’ve been given . . .
“Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?” -Henry David Thoreau
“It is not worth while to go around the world to count the cats in Zanzibar.” -Henry David Thoreau: “Walden” (1854)
“The bluebird carries the sky on his back.” -Henry David Thoreau: “Journals” (1838 - 1859), ‘3 April 1852’
Henry David Thoreau was born on 12 July 1817 in Concord, Massachusetts, United States of America. He is remembered as an essayist, a poet, a naturalist, a transcendentalist, and a practical philosopher.
“An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.” -Henry David Thoreau
“Pursue, keep up with, circle round and round your life, as a dog does his master’s chaise. Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.” -Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau, the writer of the book “Walden” (1854), was a pencil-maker by trade. Of course, as everyone knows, if you allow a person to have a pencil, the next thing he or she might very well do is to start using it to put words on paper.
“Writing your name can lead to writing sentences. And the next thing you’ll be doing is writing paragraphs, and then books. And then you’ll be in as much trouble as I am!” -Henry David Thoreau
“I know of no more encouraging fact than the ability of a man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.” -Henry David Thoreau: “Walden, or Life in the Woods”
“Almost all wild apples are handsome. They cannot be too gnarly and crabbed and rusty to look at. The gnarliest will have some redeeming traits even to the eye.” -Henry David Thoreau: “Wild Apples”
“It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?” -Henry David Thoreau: letter (16 November 1857) to Harrison Gray Otis Blake
“If a man constantly aspires, is he not elevated?” -Henry David Thoreau
“I was never unusually squeamish; I could sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish, if it was necessary.” -Henry David Thoreau
“Water is the only drink for a wise man.” -Henry David Thoreau
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.” -Henry David Thoreau: “Walden” (1854), chapter I, ‘Economy’
“Nowadays most men lead lives of noisy desperation.” -James Thurber (1894 - 1961): “Fables for Our Time” (1940)
“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 or been awarded.” -Henry David Thoreau
“It is characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.” -Henry David Thoreau
“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.” -Henry David Thoreau
“It is as hard to see one’s self as to look backwards without turning around.” -Henry David Thoreau
“Our life is frittered away by detail . . . Simplify, simplify.” -Henry David Thoreau: “Walden” (1854)
“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” -Henry David Thoreau: as attributed in “Locomotive Engineers Journal” (1942), Volume 76, page 711
“The secret of achievement is to hold a picture of a successful outcome in the mind.” -Henry David Thoreau
“If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will believe what they see. Let them see.” -Henry David Thoreau
“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
“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” -Henry David Thoreau
“As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.” -Henry David Thoreau: “Walden” (1854), ‘Economy’
“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” -Henry David Thoreau (similar quotation attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson)
“I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.” -Henry David Thoreau
“I am grateful for what I am and have. My Thanksgiving is perpetual.” -Henry David Thoreau: letter (6 December 1856) to Harrison Gray Otis Blake, as published in “The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau” (1958), page 444
“I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits unless I spend four hours a day at least . . . sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements.” -Henry David Thoreau
“I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other.” -Henry David Thoreau: “Walden” (1854)
“The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness.” -Henry David Thoreau
“A single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.” -Henry David Thoreau
“I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.” -Henry David Thoreau
“What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.” -Henry David Thoreau (similar quotation attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
“Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.” -Henry David Thoreau
“Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.” -Henry David Thoreau
“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.” -Henry David Thoreau
“All good things are wild and free.” -Henry David Thoreau
“The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man’s adobe; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.” -Henry David Thoreau
“I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.” -Henry David Thoreau
“We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.” -Henry David Thoreau
“Men are born to succeed, not to fail.” -Henry David Thoreau
“Thoreau wants a little ambition in his mixture. Fault of this, instead of being the head of American Engineers, he is captain of a huckleberry party.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson: as quoted in Lawrence Rosenwald, editor: “Selected Journals 1841 - 1877” (2010), page 557
“When were the good and the brave ever in a majority?” -Henry Thoreau
“All misfortune is but a stepping stone to fortune.” -Henry David Thoreau
“Every child begins the world again.” -Henry David Thoreau
“Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.” -Henry David Thoreau
“None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.” -Henry David Thoreau: as attributed in Kate Sanborn: “A Year of Sunshine” (1886)
“Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.” -Henry David Thoreau
“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: “The Main Woods” (1848), ‘Chesuncook’
“Man is the artificer* of his own happiness.” -Henry David Thoreau
*artificer: maker
“We live but a fraction of our lives.” -Henry David Thoreau
“There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.” -Henry David Thoreau
“When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.” -Henry David Thoreau
“There is no remedy for love but to love more.” -Henry David Thoreau
“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” -Henry David Thoreau: “Journals” (1838 - 1859), ’19 August 1851’
“Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.” -Henry David Thoreau (similar quotation attributed to Nathaniel Hawthorne)
“Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.” -Henry David Thoreau
“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” -Henry David Thoreau: “Walden” (1854)
“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. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty, poverty, nor weakness, weakness. 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” (1854), ‘Conclusion’
“Nothing is so much to be feared as fear.” -Henry David Thoreau: “Journals” (1838 - 1859), ‘7 September 1851’
“Live your life as though every act were to become a universal law.” -Henry David Thoreau
“What lies before us and what lies behind us . . . are small matters compared to what lies within us . . . and when we bring what lies within into the world . . . miracles happen!” -Henry David Thoreau: as attributed in Dan Millman: “The Life You Were Born to Live” (1995), page xi (similar quotation attributed to Henry Stanley Haskins)
“Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.” -Henry David Thoreau
“Be yourself - not your idea of what you think somebody else’s idea of yourself should be.” -Henry David Thoreau
“Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.” -Henry David Thoreau
“The man who goes alone can start today. But he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.” -Henry David Thoreau
“‘Hear! hear!’ screamed the jay from a neighboring tree, where I had heard a tittering for some time, ‘winter has a concentrated and nutty kernel, if you know where to look for it.’” -Henry David Thoreau: journal entry on 28 November 1858
“Who hears the rippling of rivers will not utterly despair of anything.” -Henry David Thoreau
“Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.” -Henry David Thoreau: “Walden” (1854)
“Many men go fishing all their lives not knowing it is not fish they are after.” -Henry David Thoreau
“Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.” -Henry David Thoreau: “Walden” (1854)
“A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is the earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.” -Henry David Thoreau
Any fool can make a rule,
And any fool will mind it.
-Henry David Thoreau: “Journals” (1838 - 1859), ‘3 February 1860’
“Goodness is the only investment that never fails.” -Henry David Thoreau: “Walden” (1854), ‘Higher Laws’
“Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.” -Henry David Thoreau: “Life Without Principle” (1863)
“This world is but a canvas to our imagination.” -Henry David Thoreau: “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers” (1849), ‘Wednesday’
“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” (1854), chapter 18
“I like the story about Henry David Thoreau, who, when he was on his deathbed, his family sent for a minister. The minister said, ‘Henry, have you made your peace with God?’ Thoreau said, ‘I didn’t know we’d quarreled.’” -Stewart Udall
Henry David Thoreau passed on at 44 years of age on 6 May 1862 in Concord, Massachusetts, United States of America, succumbing to the then-common condition tuberculosis. His thoughts live on in books, and are scattered across the internet like brilliantly colored wildflowers growing in a vast prairie.
“Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.” -Henry David Thoreau
“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.” -Henry David Thoreau: “Walden” (1854), ‘Conclusion’
This is MFOL! . . . doing the best with what we’ve been given . . .
