Favorite Thoreau Quotes
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau is a personal hero of mine because he authentically lived his life and was willing to call into question the status quo. His writing span a wide swath of topics from nature to civil disobedience to truth. He is considered a transcendentalist and was significant in influencing people like Ghandi, JFK, MLK, Tolstoy, Hemingway, George Bernard Shaw and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Here are a few of my favorite quotes from Thoreau:
If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.
A man is rich in proportion tothe number of things which he can afford to let alone.
Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.
Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.
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.
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is in prison.
Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them.
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.
Being is the great explainer.
Do not worry if you have built your castles in the air. They are where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe.
It is never too late to give up our prejudices.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation
Walden Pond