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To have done anything just for money
by Henry David Thoreau

To have done anything just for money
is to have been truly idle.
- Henry David Thoreau

Related topics: Wisdom Life Human-Nature Psychology Value

Quotes by 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

Dreams are the touchstones of our character.
- Henry David Thoreau

Every generation laughs at the old fashions,
but follows religiously the new.
- Henry David Thoreau

Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.
- 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

This world is but a canvas to our imagination.
- Henry David Thoreau

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

Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.
- Henry David Thoreau

Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify.
- 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

I have a great deal of company in the house,
especially in the morning when nobody calls.
- Henry David Thoreau

What is called genius is the
abundance of life and health.
- Henry David Thoreau

The question is not what you look at, but what you see.
- Henry David Thoreau

Not until we are lost
do we begin to understand ourselves.
- Henry David Thoreau

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.
- Henry David Thoreau

It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants.
The question is: What are we busy about?
- Henry David Thoreau

Nature will bear the closest inspection.
She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf,
and take an insect view of its plain.
- Henry David Thoreau

If we will be quiet and ready enough,
we shall find compensation in every disappointment.
- Henry David Thoreau

The youth gets together his materials
to build a bridge to the moon,
or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth,
and, at length, the middle-aged man
concludes to build a woodshed with them.
- 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

Success usually comes to those
who are too busy to be looking for it.
- Henry David Thoreau

In wilderness is the preservation of the world.
- Henry David Thoreau

Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask.
She has long ago taken her resolution.
- Henry David Thoreau

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious
as to have friends at a distance;
they make the latitudes and the longitudes.
- Henry David Thoreau

Men are born to succeed, not to fail.
- Henry David Thoreau

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth?
Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.
- Henry David Thoreau

Nature and human life are as various
as our several constitutions.
Who shall say what prospect life offers to another?
- Henry David Thoreau

In my afternoon walk I would fain forget
all my morning occupations and my obligations to society.
- Henry David Thoreau

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity;
so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.
- Henry David Thoreau

There are certain pursuits which,
if not wholly poetic and true,
do at least suggest a nobler and finer
relation to nature than we know.
The keeping of bees, for instance.
- 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

Where there is an observatory and a telescope,
we expect that any eyes will see new worlds at once.
- Henry David Thoreau

To be admitted to Nature's hearth costs nothing.
None is excluded, but excludes himself.
You have only to push aside the curtain.
- Henry David Thoreau

Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful
than Thor with his hammer.
The one melts, the other breaks into pieces.
- Henry David Thoreau

Every creature is better alive than dead,
men and moose and pine trees,
and he who understands it aright
will rather preserve its life than destroy it.
- 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

In the long run, men hit only what they aim at.
Therefore, they had better aim at something high.
- Henry David Thoreau

A man's interest in a single bluebird
is worth more than a complete but dry list
of the fauna and flora of a town.
- Henry David Thoreau

The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools,
but the gentle touches of air and water
working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.
- Henry David Thoreau

Do not hire a man who does your work for money,
but him who does it for love of it.
- 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

There are moments when all anxiety
and stated toil are becalmed
in the infinite leisure and repose of nature.
- 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

Men have a respect for scholarship and learning
greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve.
- Henry David Thoreau

Front yards are not made to walk in, but, at most, through,
and you could go in the back way.
- Henry David Thoreau

I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes,
and not rather a new wearer of clothes.
- Henry David Thoreau

Every people have gods to suit their circumstances.
- Henry David Thoreau

It's not what you look at that matters,
it's what you see.
- Henry David Thoreau

When I hear music, I fear no danger.
I am invulnerable. I see no foe.
I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.
- Henry David Thoreau

An unclean person is universally a slothful one.
- Henry David Thoreau

Is the babe young? When I behold it,
it seems more venerable than the oldest man.
- Henry David Thoreau

Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.
- Henry David Thoreau

There is no rule more invariable than that
we are paid for our suspicions
by finding what we suspect.
- Henry David Thoreau

God reigns when we take a liberal view.
- Henry David Thoreau

Make the most of your regrets;
never smother your sorrow,
but tend and cherish it till it comes to have
a separate and integral interest.
To regret deeply is to live afresh.
- Henry David Thoreau

There is no odor so bad as that
which arises from goodness tainted.
- Henry David Thoreau

True friendship can afford true knowledge.
It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.
- Henry David Thoreau

Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.
- Henry David Thoreau

Being is the great explainer.
- Henry David Thoreau

Only that day dawns to which we are awake.
- Henry David Thoreau

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.
- Henry David Thoreau

The man who goes alone can start today;
but he who travels with another
must wait till that other is ready.
- Henry David Thoreau

It takes two to speak the truth:
one to speak, and another to hear.
- Henry David Thoreau

To a philosopher all news,
as it is called, is gossip,
and they who edit and read it
are old women over their tea.
- Henry David Thoreau

Instead of noblemen,
let us have noble villages of men.
- Henry David Thoreau

The greatest compliment that was ever paid me
was when one asked me what I thought,
and attended to my answer.
- Henry David Thoreau

Simplify, simplify.
- Henry David Thoreau

It is a characteristic of wisdom
not to do desperate things.
- Henry David Thoreau

Do not trouble yourself much
to get new things, whether clothes or friends...
Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.
- Henry David Thoreau

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil
to one who is striking at the root.
- Henry David Thoreau

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Today is Your Day to Dance Lightly with Life.  It Really Is.
      - Jonathan Lockwood Huie