221 Quotes By 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 on work

Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.
Henry David Thoreau on work

If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are translated?
Henry David Thoreau on work

By avarice and selfishness, and a groveling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a robber.
Henry David Thoreau on avarice

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 moreglorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.
Henry David Thoreau on beauty

We should distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.
Henry David Thoreau on business

A thoroughbred business man cannot enter heartily upon the business of life without first looking into his accounts.
Henry David Thoreau on business

Things do not change, we do.
Henry David Thoreau on change

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 on dreams

At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable.
Henry David Thoreau on exploration

Fame is not just. She never finely or discriminatingly praises, but coarsely hurrahs.
Henry David Thoreau on fame

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.
Henry David Thoreau on fashion

A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.
Henry David Thoreau on friendship

We hate the kindness which we understand.
Henry David Thoreau on kindness

There is no remedy for love but to love more.
Henry David Thoreau on love

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts; but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates.
Henry David Thoreau on philosophy

We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.
Henry David Thoreau on success

I have 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 on success

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
Henry David Thoreau on success

Time is but the stream I go a fishing in.
Henry David Thoreau on time