Walden Quotes – Wisdom and Inspiration from Thoreau’s Classic Work

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life.

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand.

Our life is frittered away by detail.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint.

Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.

The only true wealth is the wealth of the heart.

Our life is frittered away by detail.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.

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.

It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are, than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.

Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves.

I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.

Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.

Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.

To be awake is to be alive.

There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it.

The question is not what you look at, but what you see.

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.

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.

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.

Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them.

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon

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

A village is an arsenal for ideas.

There are a hundred men hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

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.

Life is short, and we should revise our script continually.

The world is but a canvas to our imaginations.

The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

The longest journey is the journey inward.

It is never too late to give up your biases.

Dream big and dare to fail.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.

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.

The only way to do great work is to love what you do.

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

Believe you can and you’re halfway there.

It does not matter how slowly you go, as long as you do not stop.

The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.

The best revenge is massive success.

The man who has confidence in himself gains the confidence of others.

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.