Henry David Thoreau quotes, with sources

It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?

Love your life, poor as it is.

Things do not change; we change.

Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage.

Goodness is the only investment that never fails.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.

Simplify, simplify.

Enjoy the land, but own it not.

You must get your living by loving.

Nothing is so much to be feared as fear.

Read not the Times. Read the Eternities.

Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

In wildness is the preservation of the world.

Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer?

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

Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights.

That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.

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

It takes two to speak the truth — one to speak, and another to hear.

Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn.

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names.

We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones.

It is a great art to saunter.

The bluebird carries the sky on his back.

Give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth.

Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.

When were the good and the brave ever in a majority?

In a pleasant spring morning all men’s sins are forgiven.