Quotes by 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

Success

It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.

— Henry David Thoreau

Wisdom

There is no remedy for love but to love more.

— Henry David Thoreau

Love

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

Wisdom

Things do not change; we change.

— Henry David Thoreau

Wisdom

I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.

— Henry David Thoreau

Wisdom

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

Education

This world is but a canvas to our imagination.

— Henry David Thoreau

Life

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

— Henry David Thoreau

Friendship

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

— Henry David Thoreau

Wisdom

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

Success

An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.

— Henry David Thoreau

Wisdom

True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.

— Henry David Thoreau

Friendship

Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.

— Henry David Thoreau

Life

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.

— Henry David Thoreau

Wisdom

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.

— Henry David Thoreau

Wisdom

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.

— Henry David Thoreau

Success

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

— Henry David Thoreau

Friendship

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

Wisdom

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

— Henry David Thoreau

Wisdom

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.

— Henry David Thoreau

Wisdom

Men have become the tools of their tools.

— Henry David Thoreau

Wisdom

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

— Henry David Thoreau

Life

It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are... than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.

— Henry David Thoreau

Wisdom