Thoreau is one of those people who are quoted and trusted almost as much as Benjamin Franklin.
Here are a few Thoreau quotes for you…and I will likely be adding more to this page when I have the time. There are so many more good ones!
Henry David Thoreau Quotes:
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
After the first blush of sin comes its indifference.
Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.
All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.
Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.
Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.
Do not worry if you have built your castles in the air. They are where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
Do what nobody else can do for you. Omit to do anything else.
Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.
How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.
It is never too late to give up our prejudices.
It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.
Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution.
None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.
The law will never make a man free; it is men who have got to make the law free.
Things do not change; we change.
You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.
Do you have any favorites that you can share? I’m sure some of you do….
Hi Shawn, I like the one about disobedience, how true. It reminds me how careful we must be nurturing our children. Society endeavours to shape the young like fitting cogs into machinery. Imagination is often stiffled and the potential to develop a greater mind silenced in the conditioning. However “arn’t they well behaved?” echoe the voices of the programmers!
Hi Shawn, I particularly like Henry David Thoreau. These are outstanding quotes. I have one I’d like to add by him:
“What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.”
Do not worry if you have built your castles in the air. They are where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
i think this one is just mind blowing