Henry David Thoreau's best quotes (with sources)
The top 3 according to 43 votes from people: Simplify, simplify. · Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul. · The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.. (Updated Feb 13, 2020.)
Thoreau's sharpest lines from Walden, Civil Disobedience, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers and his journals and letters, each with its source. Only quotes Wikiquote can trace to his writings.
Top 14
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1
Simplify, simplify.
Walden, Where I Lived, and What I Lived For.
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2
Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.
Walden, Conclusion.
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3
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
Walden (1854), Economy.
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4
If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.
Walden, Economy.
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5
I am as desirous of being a good neighbor as I am of being a bad subject.
Civil Disobedience.
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6
It takes two to speak the truth, — one to speak, and another to hear.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849).
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7
Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one.
Civil Disobedience (1849).
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8
My life has been the poem I would have writ, but I could not both live and utter it.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.
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9
Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.
Walden, last lines.
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10
It is a great art to saunter.
Journal.
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11
How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
Journal, 1851.
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12
Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.
Journal, 1854.
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13
It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?
Letter to Harrison Blake, 1857.
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14
That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
Journal, 1856.
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Comments (1)
The trout in the milk one cracks me up every time. Thoreau was funnier than people give him credit for.