QuotesHenry David Thoreau quotes
Henry David Thoreau (1817 to 1862) was an American writer who lived for two years in a small cabin beside Walden Pond and wrote about it in Walden (1854). His essay Civil Disobedience (1849) later influenced Mahatma Gandhi.
From Walden (1854)
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential 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, Walden (1854)Our life is frittered away by detail.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that 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.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)Things do not change; we change.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)
From Civil Disobedience (1849)
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.
Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience (1849)
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The experiment at Walden
In 1845 Thoreau built a small wooden cabin on land owned by his friend Emerson, beside Walden Pond near the town of Concord in Massachusetts. He lived there for a little over two years, growing beans, reading, writing and watching the seasons. Walden, published in 1854, is his account of it. He was not a hermit: the town was a short walk away and he often went in. His point was to find out how little a person needs, and what is left when the unnecessary is removed.
Civil Disobedience and Gandhi
During his time at the pond Thoreau spent a night in jail for refusing to pay a tax, as a protest against slavery and the war with Mexico. The essay he wrote afterwards argues that a citizen should refuse to cooperate with injustice and accept the penalty. Mahatma Gandhi read it in South Africa and wrote that it had influenced him. The line about the just man and the prison comes from this essay.
Reading the famous lines rightly
- "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation" is an observation, not a sneer. It opens his argument that people work too hard for things they do not need.
- "A different drummer" is about letting each person go at their own pace, the origin of the phrase "marching to a different drum".
- "Castles in the air" tells dreamers that the dream is the right place to start, and that the next job is the foundation.
Using a Thoreau line
Thoreau suits talks on simple living, nature, the environment and courage of conscience. The "different drummer" passage is a kind thing to say about a student who does not fit the usual pattern. Give the book. The long sentence beginning "I went to the woods" should be quoted whole or not at all, because its force is in the ending.
Good to know
- "Go confidently in the direction of your dreams" is a shortened rewording. Thoreau's actual sentence, a longer one, is given below.