Henry David Thoreau Quotes

How does it become a man to behave towards the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.

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.

The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.

What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

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!

I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.

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.

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.

In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.

A man’s interest in a single bluebird is worth more than a complete but dry list of the fauna and flora of a town.

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.

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.