Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.
Henry David Thoreau
- Life
- 1817-1862
- Occupations
- poet, philosopher, essayist
- Notable works
- Walden, Civil Disobedience
Facts: Wikidata (CC0), as of 2026-07-09
A man receives only what he is ready to receive... The phenomenon or fact that cannot in any wise be linked with the rest of what he has observed, he does not observe.
Henry David Thoreau
Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.
Henry David Thoreau
Any fool can make a rule And every fool will mind it.
Henry David Thoreau
Any fool can make a rule And every fool will mind it. Journals, entry for Feb. 3, 1860
Henry David Thoreau
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity. "Economy"
Henry David Thoreau
Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.
Henry David Thoreau
Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality.
Henry David Thoreau
He could not have been tried by a jury of his peers, because his peers did not exist.
Henry David Thoreau
I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
Henry David Thoreau
If one advances confidently in the direction of one's dreams, and endeavours to live the life which one has imagined, one will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
Henry David Thoreau
I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.
Henry David Thoreau
I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.
Henry David Thoreau
I want to live deep and suck the marrow out of life!
Henry David Thoreau
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essentials facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
Henry David Thoreau
Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.
Henry David Thoreau
Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each. Let them be your only diet drink and botanical medicines.
Henry David Thoreau
Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance: they make the latitudes and longitudes.
Henry David Thoreau
The heroic actions are performed by such as are oppressed by the meanness of their lives. As in thickest darkness the stars shine brightest.
Henry David Thoreau
The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation.
Henry David Thoreau
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.
Henry David Thoreau
There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages.
Henry David Thoreau
These beginnings of commerce on a lake in the wilderness are very interesting,-these larger white birds that come to keep company with the gulls.
Henry David Thoreau
The student who secures his coveted leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisure fruitful.
Henry David Thoreau
Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.
Henry David Thoreau
The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.
Henry David Thoreau
However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names.
Henry David Thoreau
Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.
Henry David Thoreau
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.
Henry David Thoreau
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
Henry David Thoreau