Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist.
Born: July 12, 1817, Concord
Died: May 6, 1862, Concord
It takes two to speak the truth, — one to speak, and another to hear.
Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.
Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.
That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
The perception of beauty is a moral test.
Nothing is so much to be feared as fear. Atheism may comparatively be popular with God himself.
It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.
Be true to your work your world and your friend.
Things do not change; we change.
“Do not worry if you have built your castles in the air. They are where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.
How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined!
We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal and then leap in the dark to our success.
Do not lose hold of your dreams or aspirations. For if you do, you may still exist but you have ceased to live.
Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.
Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.
I had three chairs in my house: one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society
What you get by achieving your goals is to as important as what you become by achieving your goals.
Our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify.
“What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates his fate.”
