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If it is surely the means to the highest end we know,
can any work be humble or disgusting?
Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder,
the means by which we are translated?
- Henry David Thoreau
Related topics: Values Motivational Action
The question is not what you look at, but what you see.
- Henry David Thoreau
The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.
- Henry David Thoreau
Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked,
in which you can walk with love and reverence.
- Henry David Thoreau
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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Could a greater miracle take place
than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?
- Henry David Thoreau
Most men lead lives of quiet desperation
and go to the grave with the song still in them.
- Henry David Thoreau
The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?
- Henry David Thoreau
The heart is forever inexperienced.
- Henry David Thoreau
Every generation laughs at the old fashions,
but follows religiously the new.
- Henry David Thoreau
Be not merely good; be good for something.
- Henry David Thoreau
Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.
- Henry David Thoreau
I have learned, that if one advances confidently
in the direction of his dreams,
and endeavors to live the life he has imagined,
he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
- Henry David Thoreau
I have found that hollow,
which even I had relied on for solid.
- Henry David Thoreau
In the long run, men hit only what they aim at.
Therefore, they had better aim at something high.
- Henry David Thoreau
We should distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.
- Henry David Thoreau
Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify.
- Henry David Thoreau
Is the babe young? When I behold it,
it seems more venerable than the oldest man.
- Henry David Thoreau
Many men go fishing all of their lives
without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
- Henry David Thoreau
Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day.
- Henry David Thoreau
Nay, be a Columbus to whole new
continents and worlds within you,
opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.
- Henry David Thoreau
As you simplify your life,
the laws of the universe will be simpler;
solitude will not be solitude,
poverty will not be poverty,
nor weakness weakness.
- Henry David Thoreau
The perception of beauty is a moral test.
- Henry David Thoreau
If a man loses 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.
- Henry David Thoreau
It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.
- Henry David Thoreau
What is once well done is done forever.
- Henry David Thoreau
An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.
- Henry David Thoreau
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
- 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 foundations under them.
- Henry David Thoreau
I have always been regretting that
I was not as wise as the day I was born.
- Henry David Thoreau
Be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you,
opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.
- Henry David Thoreau
We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal,
and then leap in the dark to our success.
- Henry David Thoreau
I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes,
and not rather a new wearer of clothes.
- Henry David Thoreau
The universe is wider than our views of it.
- Henry David Thoreau
We shall see but a little way if
we require to understand what we see.
- Henry David Thoreau
I have a great deal of company in the house,
especially in the morning when nobody calls.
- Henry David Thoreau
Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed,
and in such desperate enterprises?
If a man does not keep pace with his companions,
perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
- Henry David Thoreau
There are old heads in the world
who cannot help me by their example or advice
to live worthily and satisfactorily to myself;
but I believe that it is in my power
to elevate myself this very hour
above the common level of my life.
- Henry David Thoreau
All this worldly wisdom was once
the unamiable heresy of some wise man.
- Henry David Thoreau
If we will be quiet and ready enough,
we shall find compensation in every disappointment.
- Henry David Thoreau
None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
- Henry David Thoreau
It is never too late to give up our prejudices.
- Henry David Thoreau
Things do not change; we change.
- Henry David Thoreau
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.
- Henry David Thoreau
Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl:
it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.
- Henry David Thoreau
Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.
- Henry David Thoreau
Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.
- Henry David Thoreau
Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.
- Henry David Thoreau
If one advances confidently
in the direction of his dreams,
and endeavors to live
the life which he has imagined,
he will meet with success
unexpected in common hours.
- Henry David Thoreau
I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself,
than be crowded on a velvet cushion.
- Henry David Thoreau
What is called genius is the
abundance of life and health.
- Henry David Thoreau
If a man does not keep pace with his companions,
perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
- Henry David Thoreau
No face which we can give to a matter
will stead us so well at last as the truth.
This alone wears well.
- Henry David Thoreau
Simplify, simplify.
- Henry David Thoreau
Books can only reveal us to ourselves,
and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.
- Henry David Thoreau
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
What old people say you cannot do,
you try and find that you can.
Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.
- Henry David Thoreau
It's not what you look at that matters,
it's what you see.
- Henry David Thoreau
You must live in the present,
launch yourself on every wave,
find your eternity in each moment.
- Henry David Thoreau
To have done anything just for money
is to have been truly idle.
- Henry David Thoreau
Dreams are the touchstones of our character.
- Henry David Thoreau
It is what a man thinks of himself
that really determines his fate.
- Henry David Thoreau
We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake,
not by mechanical aid, but by
an infinite expectation of the dawn.
- Henry David Thoreau
Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.
- Henry David Thoreau
I did not wish to take a cabin passage,
but rather to go before the mast
and on the deck of the world,
for there I could best see
the moonlight amid the mountains.
I do not wish to go below now.
- Henry David Thoreau
There is no remedy for love but to love more.
- Henry David Thoreau
As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth,
so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind.
To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again.
To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over
the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.
- Henry David Thoreau
That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest.
- Henry David Thoreau
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.
- Henry David Thoreau
Only he is successful in his business who makes that pursuit
which affords him the highest pleasure sustain him.
- Henry David Thoreau
The bluebird carries the sky on his back.
- Henry David Thoreau
May we so love as never to have occasion
to repent of our love!
- Henry David Thoreau
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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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