Thoreau Quotes – Wisdom and Inspiration from an American Philosopher

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.

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.

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

Our life is frittered away by detail… Simplify, simplify.

It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?

Be yourself- not your idea of what you think somebody else’s idea of yourself should be.

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.

The world is but a canvas to our imagination.”

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

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.”

What if our whole life were preparation for a moment that would never come?

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.

Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.

The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles.

Thoreau Quotes – Wisdom and Inspiration from an American Philosopher part 2

The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest.

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but religiously follows the new.

This world is but a canvas to our imagination.

Labor is still, and ever will be, the inevitable price set upon everything which is valuable.

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.

Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.

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.

The question is not what you look at, but what you see.

By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences; and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent.

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

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.

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

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

If a man constantly aspires is he not elevated?

Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them.

There is no remedy for love but to love more.

As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society.

Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.

The bluebird carries the sky on his back.

Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.

I think we may safely trust a good deal more than we do.

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.

It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look.

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

The sun is but a morning star.

We are constantly invited to be who we are.

The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when someone asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.

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