Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

"None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm."

"This world is but a canvas to our imagination."

"The perception of beauty is a moral test."

"I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business."

"Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all."

"If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life."

"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."

"Dreams are the touchstones of our character."

"Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams."

"Wealth is the ability to fully experience life."

"The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness."

"Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed... Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders."

"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."

"The language of friendship is not words but meanings."

"I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society."

"A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend."

"Goodness is the only investment that never fails."

"Not only must we be good, but we must also be good for something."

"Be not simply good - be good for something."

"If an injustice requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the government machine."

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

"Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?"

"There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself."

"'Tis healthy to be sick sometimes."

"What is called genius is the abundance of life and health."

"Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around."

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."

"Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself."

"It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know."

"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."

"To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts."

"Men are born to succeed, not to fail."

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation."

"Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after."

"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."

"The heart is forever inexperienced."

"Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads."