Henry David Thoreau was bestknown for his book Walden. He was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist.
Walden is a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.
“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.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods
“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden
“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”
― Henry David Thoreau
“One must maintain a little bittle of summer, even in the middle of winter.”
― Henry David Thoreau
“It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.”
― Henry David Thoreau
“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. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods
“Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.”
― Henry David Thoreau
“What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.”
― Henry David Thoreau
“be yourself- not your idea of what you think somebody else's idea of yourself should be.”
― Henry David Thoreau
“Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden
“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 he hears, however measured or far away.”
― Henry David Thoreau
“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience and Other Essays
“Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.”
― 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, Walden
“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.”
― Henry David Thoreau
“Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden and Other Writings
“Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.”
― Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
“Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.”
― Henry David Thoreau
“The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.”
― Henry David Thoreau
“All good things are wild and free.”
― Henry David Thoreau
