Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was an American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher. A leading transcendentalist, he is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay “Civil Disobedience”, an argument for disobedience to an unjust state.
Henry David Thoreau Quotes
I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.
—Henry David Thoreau
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
—Henry David Thoreau
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.
—Henry David Thoreau
This world is but canvas to our imaginations.
—Henry David Thoreau
I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.
—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
Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.
—Henry David Thoreau
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
The question is not what you look at, but what you see.
—Henry David Thoreau
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
—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
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
Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.
—Henry David Thoreau
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
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.
—Henry David Thoreau