We are constantly invited to be who we are.
—Henry David Thoreau
Public opinion is a weak tyrant, compared with our private opinion – what a man thinks of himself, that is which determines, or rather indicates his fate.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Awareness, Fate, Acceptance, Opinion, Opinions, Optimism, Realization, Confidence, Positive Attitudes, Public opinion
Glances of true beauty can be seen in the faces of those who live in true meekness.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Strength
I have a great deal of company in my house; especially in the morning when nobody calls.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Solitude
The universe is wider than our views of it.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Universe, The Universe
No man ever followed his genius until it misled him.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Genius
The language of friendship is not words but meanings.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Friendship, Feelings
Death is beautiful when seen to be a law, and not an accident – It is as common as life.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Death
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Books, Reading, Literature, Book
Gnaw your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, gnaw it still.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Perseverance, Resolve, Endurance
Our truest life is when we are in our dreams awake.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Dreams
I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Generations
Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say let your affairs be as one, two, three and to a hundred or a thousand … We are happy in proportion to the things we can do without.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Simplicity
There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Work
Sobriety, severity, and self-respect are the foundations of all true sociality.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Society
All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Voting
Did you ever hear of a man who had striven all his life faithfully and singly toward an object, and in no measure obtained it? If a man constantly aspires, is he not elevated? Did ever a man try heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no advantage in them-that it was a vain endeavor?
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Desires, Doing Your Best, Goals, Desire
This life is not for complaint, but for satisfaction.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Self-Pity, Satisfaction, Hedonism
Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry. Men say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a thousand stitches today to save nine tomorrow.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Action
What wisdom, what warning can prevail against gladness? There is no law so strong that a little gladness may not transgress.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Happiness
If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Achievement
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Rich, Wealth, Appreciation, Leadership, Blessings, Gratitude
Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each. Let them be your only diet, drink, and botanical medicines.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Seasons, Living, Time
I wanted to live deep and suck out all he marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swatch and shave close, to drive life into a corner and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it or if it were sublime to know it by experience and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Experience, Give, Live, Life
You know about a person who deeply interests you more than you can be told. A look, a gesture, an act, which to everybody else is insignificant tells you more about that one than words can.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: People
Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life … would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Reality
It is strange that men will talk of miracles, revelations, inspiration, and the like, as things past, while love remains.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Love
Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only indispensible, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Wealth
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Books
Spring is a natural resurrection, an experience in immortality.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Fame
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Ralph Waldo Emerson American Philosopher
Amos Bronson Alcott American Teacher
Mortimer J. Adler American Philosopher, Educator
John Cage American Composer
Charles Sanders Peirce American Philosopher
Walt Whitman American Poet
Norman Mailer American Novelist, Journalist
Kahlil Gibran Lebanese-born American Philosopher
Will Durant American Historian
George Santayana Spanish-American Poet, Philosopher