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Life Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

432 Life quotes by Henry David Thoreau

All Life quotes Henry David Thoreau’s page

Thoreau points out that many people spend most of their days chasing money, only to find a shaky sense of freedom when they’re older. He says the real value of anything is the amount of life you give up for it, not the price tag. He also reminds us that life is short, but our dreams can be far richer than any kingdom.

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Be it life or death, we crave only reality.

Henry David Thoreau

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However mean your life is, meet it and live it.

Henry David Thoreau

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Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.

Henry David Thoreau

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Simplify, simplify, simplify.

Henry David Thoreau

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I love the broad margin to my life.

Henry David Thoreau

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We live but a fraction of our lives.

Henry David Thoreau

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Life in us is like the water in a river.

Henry David Thoreau

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Live the life you've dreamed.

Henry David Thoreau

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Still we live meanly like ants, though the fable tells us we were long ago changed into men.

Henry David Thoreau

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

Henry David Thoreau

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A man's whole life is taxed for the least thing well done. It is its net result.

Henry David Thoreau

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To have made even one person's life a little better, that is to succeed.

Henry David Thoreau

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Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.

Henry David Thoreau

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My life has been the poem I would have writ, But I could not both live and utter it.

Henry David Thoreau

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Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently appreciated by mankind.

Henry David Thoreau

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“My life has been the poem I could have writ But I could not both live and utter it.”

Henry David Thoreau

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I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has…

Henry David Thoreau

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A slight sound at evening lifts me up by the ears, and makes life seem inexpressibly serene and grand. It may be…

Henry David Thoreau

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But the divinest poem, or the life of a great man, is the severest satire… The greater the genius, the keener the…

Henry David Thoreau

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If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will…

Henry David Thoreau

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Thus men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up.

Henry David Thoreau

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The improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man's existence: as our skeletons, probably, are not…

Henry David Thoreau

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Some things are really necessaries of life in some circles, which in others are luxuries merely and in others still are entirely…

Henry David Thoreau

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It is not enough that our life is an easy one. We must live on the stretch, retiring to our rest like…

Henry David Thoreau

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Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that…

Henry David Thoreau

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I like sometimes to take rank hold on life and spend my day more as the animals do. Perhaps I have owed…

Henry David Thoreau

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The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let…

Henry David Thoreau

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In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post office. You may depend on it,…

Henry David Thoreau

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I have no doubt that they lived pretty much the same sort of life in the Homeric age, for men have always…

Henry David Thoreau

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Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn…

Henry David Thoreau

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Even the poor student studies and is taught only political economy, while that economy of living which is synonymous with philosophy is…

Henry David Thoreau

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A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in…

Henry David Thoreau

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“Not long since I was present at the auction of a deacon's effects, for his life had not been ineffectual:-- "The evil…

Henry David Thoreau

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The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied…

Henry David Thoreau

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Life consists with Wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him. One who pressed…

Henry David Thoreau

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The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only…

Henry David Thoreau

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“This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! I am awaked almost every night by the panting of the…

Henry David Thoreau

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The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling,…

Henry David Thoreau

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“Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me. Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep.…

Henry David Thoreau

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If you take this life to be simply what old religious folks pretend (I mean the effete, gone to seed in a…

Henry David Thoreau

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More by Henry David Thoreau

If ever I did a man any goodof course it was something exceptional and insignificant compared with the good or evil which I am…

Henry David Thoreau

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end.

Henry David Thoreau

“Men say they know many things; But lo! they have taken wings, — The arts and sciences, And a thousand appliances; The wind that…

Henry David Thoreau

I am not afraid of praise, for I have practiced it on myself.

Henry David Thoreau

“All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or back gammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and…

Henry David Thoreau

“This spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of…

Henry David Thoreau

As for doing good; that is one of the professions which is full. Moreover I have tried it fairly and, strange as it may…

Henry David Thoreau

A traveler who looks at things with an impartial eye may see what the oldest inhabitant has not observed.

Henry David Thoreau

In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post office. You may depend on it, that the…

Henry David Thoreau

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

Henry David Thoreau

The still youthful energies of the globe have only to be directed in their proper channel.

Henry David Thoreau

Concord's little arch does not span all our fate, nor is what transpires under it law for the universe.

Henry David Thoreau

The lumberers rarely trouble themselves to put out their fires, such is the dampness of the primitive forest; and this is one cause, no…

Henry David Thoreau

“When he has obtained those things which are necessary to life, there is another alternative than to obtain the superfluities; and that is, to…

Henry David Thoreau

Wealth is measured by the level of experience in all aspects of life

Henry David Thoreau