Quotes from Henry David Thoreau

For an impenetrable shield, stand inside yourself

I came to love my rows, my beans, though so many more than I wanted. They attached me to the earth, and so I got strength like Antaeus.

The fibers of all things have their tension and are strained like the strings of an instrument.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.

The secret of achievement is to hold a picture of a successful outcome in mind.

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

Men are born to succeed, not to fail.

In the long run, you hit only what you aim at.

We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.

It is what a man thinks of himself that really determines his fate.

As for doing good; that is one of the professions which is full. Moreover I have tried it fairly and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution.

Yet we must try the harder, the less the prospect of success.

Undoubtedly, in the most brilliant successes, the first rank is always sacrificed.

You must get your living by loving, or at least half your life is a failure.

For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done forever.

Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.

We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.

In winter we lead a more inward life. Our hearts are warm and cheery, like cottages under drifts.

Why should we be startled by death? Life is a constant putting off of the mortal coil - coat, cuticle, flesh and bones, all old clothes.

We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect. [So why not suspect good rather than bad in events, people and life and thereby find it more?]

It [is of] some advantage to live a primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization, if only to learn what are the gross necessities of life.

How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?