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7 Henry David Thoreau Quotes to Inspire Your Next Nature Vacation

These quotes from "Walden" and other works by Thoreau will have you ditching the couch and running for the great outdoors.

Henry David Thoreau was a prolific American writer and naturalist. What we might consider “stunt journalism” today, Thoreau spent more than two years living alone in the woods near Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. The experience incited within him a new appreciation for the natural world , and it inspired his teachings of ethical living.

Much of Thoreau’s most well-known quotes come from “ Walden ,” the book he wrote about living in the woods simply and independently. If anyone could understand the beauty of the world around us — and put it into words — it was Thoreau. His reflections on nature were both poetic and scientific, and they continue to inspire new generations to appreciate all that the natural world has to offer... and to get out there and see it.

Find some of Henry David Thoreau's most influential musings below.

“We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and Titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.” — Henry David Thoreau, "Walden"

“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”

“I love Nature partly because she is not man, but a retreat from him. None of his institutions control or pervade her. There a different kind of right prevails. In her midst I can be glad with an entire gladness. if this world were all man, I could not stretch myself, I should lose all hope. He is constraint, she is freedom to me. He makes me wish for another world. She makes me content with this." — Henry David Thoreau’s journals

“Wildness is the preservation of the World.”

― Henry David Thoreau, “Walking”

“I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit.”

“The tops of mountains are among the unfinished parts of the globe, whither it is a slight insult to the gods to climb and pry into their secrets, and try their effect on our humanity. Only daring and insolent men, perchance, go there.”

― Henry David Thoreau, “The Maine Woods”

“The spruce and cedar on its shores, hung with gray lichens, looked at a distance like the ghosts of trees. Ducks were sailing here and there on its surface, and a solitary loon, like a more living wave — a vital spot on the lake's surface — laughed and frolicked, and showed its straight leg, for our amusement.”

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What Henry David Thoreau Taught Me About Travel

“I have traveled a great deal in Concord,” said Henry Thoreau, a native of…wait for it…Concord, Massachusetts.

In fact, Thoreau traveled far and wide for his day and age, vagabonding to Cape Cod and the vast wilderness of the Maine Woods. However, the great prophet of enlightened self-reliance claimed to have done most of his traveling in his own hometown.

Thoreau understood something that many of us modern day nomads would do well to recognize: travel is a matter of perspective, not location. With curiosity, an open mind and a broad horizon of free time, it’s possible to travel in your own backyard.

I’m writing in El Calafate, a tourist boomtown in Argentine Patagonia. I am, admittedly, a long way from home. But, just the same, at the moment I’m not really traveling.

I’m in the common area of a hostel – two girls from Boston are shooting pool in front of me, and it’s hard to concentrate on writing when they bend over to take a shot. Sublime is playing on the stereo… Girl, Caress Me Down …. I’m wearing Patagonia brand clothes, but I’m not really experiencing Patagonia anymore than you are.

Neither, sadly, are many of my fellow tourists here in El Calafate. Every hour, buses segregated by wealth and nationality pull up to the viewpoint overlooking the Perito Moreno glacier.

Tourists disembark – they Ooh and Ahh in their respective languages, snap a few trophy photos, nap in the bus back to the hotel and fly thousands of miles back home on airplanes that belch carbon into the sky.

Meanwhile, the famous glacier shrinks, but that’s OK – I already have my ice-climbing photo.

What Makes A Traveler?

Now, the tourist / traveler distinction has already been beaten into the ground, and I’m not so sure of its validity in the first place. But it IS clear that coming all the way to Patagonia does not make one a traveler.

So what DOES make a traveler, I wonder? How did Thoreau manage to travel in Concord when so many of my fellow tourists here in El Calafate never leave their comfort zones?

Well, Thoreau rambled. He walked the country roads and stopped to talk to anyone he met along the way. He followed fox tracks through the snow, and wondered at their meaning. He approached the fields and homesteads of Concord with an open-ended sense of curiosity.

He looked at things, and thought about them, and tried his best to place them within the context of his broad experience. He moved slowly, and he paid attention.

Into The Hills

I remember one time, back when I worked an office job.

It was a Tuesday, and after work I just couldn’t take it any longer: with nothing but the clothes on my back I set off into the hills behind my house, trekked across the coal fields and into the valley beyond. The sun started to go down, but I just kept walking.

I came upon a small stream, which I resolved to follow until it led back to civilization. The night was dark, and there was no moon. I traveled by feel, my mind wide open, my nerves on edge. Once, I stepped on a sleeping turtle – and believe me, that was a shot of adrenaline on par with a virgin view of the Mayan Temples, the Egyptian Pyramids and even Angkor Wat.

Four times I came to dams, and had to scramble around them through thick bamboo grass. When I finally emerged into a village, covered in mud and cobwebs, it was past midnight.

The next day at work I couldn’t stop grinning. I had gone on a TRIP. Beyond that, I now knew what was Out There , over the hills, and by understanding what was Out There, I had a better appreciation for home and work – the comfortable routines to which I was able to return.

My carbon footprint for the journey? Zero.

A Sense Of Wonder

The truth is, we travel every time we open our minds to a new possibility, every time we open our hearts to a new emotion, every time we take a new track, read a new book or just look at a rock and wonder how it got there.

There is comfort in routine and stability, but when we stop traveling we lose the sense of wonder that equates to joy, that carves new channels in our minds and makes us feel alive. So go. Go on. Go.

Take a notebook and a pen and a camera – see what you find. Then come back, and tell me the story.

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Henry D. Thoreau Quotations

Thoreau is one of the most quoted American authors. His books, essays, and journals include poignant, poetic, provocative, and timeless observations on all manner of natural history and human nature. Here, you can explore Thoreau’s wisdom through quotations organized by topic. At the bottom of the page is a link to the Henry D. Thoreau Mis-Quotation Page for quotations that are often either misquoted or erroneously attributed to Thoreau.

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The Henry D. Thoreau Mis-Quotation Page

quotations misquoted or erroneously attributed to Henry D. Thoreau.

Please report errors to The Walden Woods Project Library .

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Henry David Thoreau Quotes About Journey

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The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.

It is a great art to saunter !

Every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us.

Some do not walk at all; others walk in the highways; a few walk across lots.

We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return - sending back our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms.

Of course it is of no use to direct our steps to the woods, if they do not carry us thither. I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit.... What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?

I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.

Even the elephant carries but a small trunk on his journeys. The perfection of traveling is to travel without baggage.

I am reminded by my journey how exceedingly new this country still is. You have only to travel for a few days into the interior and back parts even of many of the old States, to come to that very America which the Northmen, and Cabot, and Gosnold, and Smith, and Raleigh visited.

I do believe that the outward and the inward life correspond; that if any should succeed to live a higher life, others would not know of it; that difference and distance are one. To set about living a true life is to go on a journey to a distant country, gradually to find ourselves surrounded by new scenes and men; and as long as the old are around me, I know that I am not in any true sense living a new or a better life.

Some hard and dry book in a dead language, which you have found it impossible to read at home, but for which you still have a lingering regard, is the best to carry with you on a journey.

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Henry David Thoreau

Born: July 12, 1817
Died: May 6, 1862
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55+ Best Henry David Thoreau Quotes

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Famous Henry David Thoreau Quotes

Henry david thoreau quotes about transcendentalism, henry david thoreau nature quotes, henry david thoreau quotes from civil disobedience, henry david thoreau quotes on love.

Thoreau was most famous for his masterpiece called 'Walden' – a book on simple and sober living in a natural setting.

Thoreau was one of the most renowned Naturalists of his time and was celebrated for his views on life. His sayings from the Walden pond quotes are well-known.

Henry David Thoreau's messages were always relative to his beliefs. A selfless philosophy that he used to preach quite often, Transcendence, implies that people are highly aware of themselves and their surroundings – going much beyond the five senses.

According to Thoreau, wisdom was something ingrained and that a person attained by going out into the world and truly living. Similarly, Thoreau's solitude didn't just mean seclusion or isolation, it called for inward communication and introspection. This was Thoreau's message: that outward connections and materialistic pursuits weren't as important as inward learning and introspection.

Henry Thoreau quotes are famous for their relevance across the ages and his message was largely for people to lead a simple and austere living.

There is a famous Henry David Thoreau quote that goes, "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."

While you enjoy these quotes from Henry David Thoreau, do also take a look at our Alfred Adler quotes and Aldo Leopold quotes.

Here are some of the most famous lines by Thoreau captured in all glory.

1. "I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad."

-Henry David Thoreau, 'Civil Disobedience'.

2. "You must live in the present – launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this."

-Henry David Thoreau.

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

4. "How can any man be weak who dares to be at all?"

5. "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'.

6. "Goodness is the only investment that never fails."

7. "I can alter my life by altering my attitude. He who would have nothing to do with thorns must never attempt to gather flowers."

8. "The world is but a canvas to our imagination."

9. "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."

10. "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."

Thoreau's views on Transcendentalism are known for being both simple and effective.

11. "None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm."

12. "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."

13. "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."

14. "I believe that water is the only drink for the wise man."

15. "I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary."

16. "Be yourself – not your idea of what you think somebody else's idea of yourself should be."

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

18. "Every man is a builder of a temple called his body."

19. "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."

20. "Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only indispensable but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind."

These Henry David Thoreau quotes about nature will surely leave every reader spellbound.

21. "If a man walks 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 days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen."

-Henry David Thoreau, 'Life Without Principle'.

22. "What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?"

23. "In wilderness is the preservation of the world."

24. "There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature."

25. "I love Nature partly because she is not man, but a retreat from him. None of his institutions control or pervade her. There a different kind of right prevails. In her midst, I can be glad with an entire gladness."

26. "Nature refuses to sympathize with our sorrow. She seems not to have provided for, but by a thousand contrivances against it."

27. "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?"

28. "I have a room all to myself; it is nature."

29. "Grow wild according to thy nature... Enjoy the land but own it not."

30. "Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself."

31. "If this world were all man, I could not stretch myself, I should lose all hope. He is constraint, she is freedom to me. He makes me wish for another world. She makes me content with this."

Here are some powerful Henry David Thoreau quotes from his work 'Civil Disobedience'.

32. "For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done forever."

33. "The rich man is always sold to the institution which makes him rich."

34. "I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest."

35. "A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority."

36. "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."

37. "O for a man who is a man, and, as my neighbor says, has a bone in his back which you cannot pass your hand through!"

38. "A lawyer's truth is not truth. It is consistency, or consistent expediency"

39. "A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority."

40. “It is after all with men, and not with parchment, that I quarrel.”

41. "Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn."

Henry David Thoreau shares his views on love with these fine quotes.

42. "Love must be as much a light, as it is a flame."

43. "Till we have loved we have not imagined the heights of love."

44. "I love you not as something private and personal, which is my own, but as something universal and worthy of love, which I have found."

45. "Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it."

46. "There is only one path to heaven. On Earth, we call it love."

47. "Enemies publish themselves. They declare war. The friend never declares his love."

48. "There is no remedy to love, but to love more."

49. "Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth."

50. "A farmer, a hunter, a soldier, a reporter, even a philosopher, may be daunted; but nothing can deter a poet, for he is actuated by pure love. Who can predict his comings and goings? His business calls him out at all hours, even when doctors sleep."

51. "Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still."

52. "The light of the sun is but the shadow of love."

53. "In a world of peace and love, music would be the universal language."

54. "How insufficient is all wisdom without love."

55. "What is the singing of birds, or any natural sound, compared with the voice of one we love?"

56. "Love never perjures itself, nor is it mistaken."

Here at Kidadl , we have carefully curated lots of interesting family-friendly quotes for everyone to enjoy! If you liked 55+ best Henry David Thoreau quotes, then why not take a look at our Alexander Pope quotes or Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn quotes ?

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A professional content writer hailing from Kolkata, India, with extensive experience in the corporate sector, Writvik Gupta has worked with several reputed companies, including ITC WelcomHotel Jodhpur, Bharti AXA Life Insurance, Aryan Imaging, and Eduquity. He also serves as a consultant for a startup based in Bangalore. With a passion for the outdoors, Writvik enjoys trekking and traveling to remote destinations. He also has a keen interest in exploring various cuisines and regularly volunteers for social causes.

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Aug. 9, 1854: Thoreau Warns, 'The Railroad Rides on Us'

__1854: __Henry David Thoreau publishes Walden, or, Life in the Woods. His distillation of two years living in relative seclusion offers deep insights not just into the natural world and humanity's place in it, but how that relationship was being impacted -- and degraded -- by the Industrial Revolution. It remains to this day a trenchant criticism of the excesses of technology.

Thoreau lived in a cabin on the shore of Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts, from 1845 to 1847. He was not intending to be a hermit, though he valued solitude and wrote movingly about it.

He visited friends and received visitors, notably Ralph Waldo Emerson, who owned the land on which Thoreau built his cabin. Walden devotes several chapters to visitors and neighbors. And he made trips into town to see family and friends.

Thoreau made his intention clear:

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.... 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.

A man is rich, Thoreau wrote, "in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone":

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! 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.

Two new technologies, the railroad and the telegraph, were -- within Thoreau's lifetime -- supplanting the horse, which for five or six thousand years had been the fastest way to move people, goods and information. Thoreau had little regard for the new devices:

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.

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A railroad ran along Walden Pond about one-third of a mile from Thoreau's cabin, and he could hear the rattle of the trains. But he thought a trip by rail was a bad bargain:

One says to me, "I wonder that you do not lay up money; you love to travel; you might take the cars and go to Fitchburg today and see the country." But I am wiser than that. I have learned that the swiftest traveller is he that goes afoot. I say to my friend, Suppose we try who will get there first. The distance is thirty miles; the fare ninety cents. That is almost a day's wages. I remember when wages were sixty cents a day for laborers on this very road. Well, I start now on foot, and get there before night; I have travelled at that rate by the week together. You will in the meanwhile have earned your fare, and arrive there some time tomorrow, or possibly this evening, if you are lucky enough to get a job in season. Instead of going to Fitchburg, you will be working here the greater part of the day. And so, if the railroad reached round the world, I think that I should keep ahead of you.

Thoreau was sensitive as well to the social costs of building and maintaining railroads, and the worsening conditions of laborers in the rapidly industrializing United States and Europe:

We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us. Did you ever think what those sleepers are that underlie the railroad? Each one is a man.... The rails are laid on them, and they are covered with sand, and the cars run smoothly over them. They are sound sleepers, I assure you. And every few years a new lot is laid down and run over; so that, if some have the pleasure of riding on a rail, others have the misfortune to be ridden upon.

Of fashion, Thoreau was openly contemptuous:

I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.... When I ask for a garment of a particular form, my tailoress tells me gravely, "They do not make them so now," not emphasizing the "They" at all, as if she quoted an authority as impersonal as the Fates.... We worship not the Graces, nor the Parcae, but Fashion. She spins and weaves and cuts with full authority. The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveller's cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same.... The manufacturers have learned that this taste is merely whimsical. Of two patterns which differ only by a few threads more or less of a particular color, the one will be sold readily, the other lie on the shelf, though it frequently happens that after the lapse of a season the latter becomes the most fashionable.... I cannot believe that our factory system is the best mode by which men may get clothing. The ... principal object is, not that mankind may be well and honestly clad, but, unquestionably, that corporations may be enriched. In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high.

Thoreau's first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers , had sold only a few hundred copies. He wrote in his journal, "I have now a library of nearly 900 volumes, over 700 of which I wrote myself."

But Walden sold comparatively well. The first edition, with a press run of 2,000 copies , cost a dollar (about $26 worth of today's buying power). Walden fell out of fashion (that word again) in the late 19th century, but Thoreau gained increasing and deserved recognition and accolades throughout the ever-modernizing 20th century. He is today recognized not only as a literary giant but as one of the founders of the environmental movement.

Less well-known is his role in the 1830s and '40s as the modernizer of his family business: manufacturing pencils. Thoreau, who sometimes styled himself an engineer, both improved the product and streamlined the factory's production process.

Is this a contradiction? Rather than being judgmental of such changes, better we should be mindful of Thoreau's own dictum:

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.

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Photo courtesy Library of Congress

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66 of the Most Influential Henry David Thoreau Quotes

Henry David Thoreau was born in Massachusetts in 1817. He is most known for being a political philosopher but he was also known as an essayist and a poet

In 1828, Thoreau’s parents had sent him to Concord Academy where he had deeply impressed his teacher and was then able to prepare for his attendance of college. He attended Harvard University beginning in 1833.

Upon graduating Havard in 1837, Henry lasted two weeks as a teacher at his old grammar school, then worked in the family’s pencil-making business until 1838 when his brother John and him had started a school. Sadly his brother John had fallen ill and the school they had created together only lasted about three years.

In the 1840s, Henry began focusing on his poetry and literary career instead of his initial goal of being a schoolmaster. His brother died in 1842 which stuck Henry with grief and made him grow restless. Later in his life he became more of an activist up until his death.

He studied civil disobedience, is in the Hall of Fame for Great Americans (1960), founder of ‘The Dial’ and three of his notable works are Walden , Civil Disobedience and The Maine Woods . Henry David Thoreau died at the young age of 44 in his hometown of Concord, Massachusetts in 1862 of tuberculosis.

Henry David Thoreau Quotes

“Our life is frittered away by detail…simplify, simplify.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Be yourself, not your idea of what you think somebody else’s idea of yourself should be.” – Henry David Thoreau
“It’s the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us. The question is not what you look at but what you see.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.” – Henry David Thoreau
“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
“I was not designed to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.” – Henry David Thoreau
“When it’s time to die, let us not discover that we have never lived.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Simplify your life. Don’t waste the years struggling for things that are unimportant. Don’t burden yourself with possessions. Keep your needs and wants simple and enjoy what you have. Don’t destroy your peace of mind by looking back, worrying about the past. Live in the present. Simplify!” – Henry David Thoreau
“The universe is wider than our views of it.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden
“Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.” – Henry David Thoreau
“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” – Henry David Thoreau
“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
“However mean your life is, meet it and live it.” – Henry David Thoreau
“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Not till we are completely lost or turned around… do we begin to find ourselves.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.” – Henry David Thoreau
“You must not only aim right, but draw the bow with all your might.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Think for yourself, or others will think for you without thinking of you.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Surely joy is the condition of life.” – Henry David Thoreau
“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 he hears, however measured or far away.” – Henry David Thoreau
“As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Not all who wander are lost.” – Henry David Thoreau
“There is no remedy for love but to love more.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Maturity is when all of your mirrors turn into windows.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.” – Henry David Thoreau
“All good things are wild and free.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Things do not change; we change.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Happiness is like a butterfly ; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you. But if you turn you attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.” – Henry David Thoreau
“The greatest tragedy in life is to spend your whole life fishing only to discover it was never fish that you were after.” – Henry David Thoreau
“As 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
“Be not simply good, be good for something.” – 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
“Any fool can make a rule And any fool will mind it.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.” – Henry David Thoreau
“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Only that traveling is good which reveals to me the value of home and enables me to enjoy it better.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.” – Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
“Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.” – Henry David Thoreau
“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.” – Henry David Thoreau
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.” – Henry David Thoreau
“The language of friendship is not words but meanings.” – Henry David Thoreau
“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, Walden
“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Most of the luxuries and many so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.” – Henry David Thoreau
“An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.” – Henry David Thoreau
“The only people who ever get anyplace interesting are the people who get lost.” – Henry David Thoreau
“It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.” – Henry David Thoreau
“The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?” – Henry David Thoreau
“I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of a man to elevate his life by conscious endeavour.” – Henry David Thoreau
“I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race in it’s gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Every oak tree started out as a couple of nuts who stood their ground.” – Henry David Thoreau
“What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.” – Henry David Thoreau
“What is once well done is done forever.” – Henry David Thoreau
“To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Life isn’t about finding yourself ; it’s about creating yourself. So live the life you imagined.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.” – Henry David Thoreau

Related: Interesting Quotes about Maturity

Henry David Thoreau Video – Civil Disobedience

If you have read this far you should check out this fun and short educational video.

Everyone who has heard of Henry David Thoreau knows that he wrote Walden , but most people don’t know he also wrote a small pamphlet titled Civil Disobedience in which he recommended that if a US president is taking a wrong turn, that good citizens have a duty to protest. This concept has been a part of American politics since day 1.

Henry David Thoreau remains one of America’s most famous political writers. His impact on the world was inspiring people to work and fight hard for what they love and believe in, motivating people to break rules that they do not believe in and most of all influencing people to be their own individual self. These quotes represent the motivational, influential, and inspiring punch that Henry David Thoreau impacted the world with.

Image Credit: National Portrait Gallery, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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