Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Men have become the tools of their tools.

Most are engaged in business the greater part of their lives, because the soul abhors a vacuum and they have not discovered any continuous employment for man's nobler faculties.

My friend is one... who take me for what I am.

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

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

Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.

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

Thank God men cannot as yet fly and lay waste the sky as well as the earth!

That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.

The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

To regret deeply is to live afresh.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is in prison.

We must have infinite faith in each other. If we have not, we must never let it leak out that we have not.

What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?

What people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can.

When a dog runs at you, whistle for him.

[Water is] the only drink for a wise man.

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.
"Walden", 1854

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
"Walden", 1854