Henry David Thoreau Quotes

Learn on how little man may live, and how small a portion nature requires.

Nature delights in the most plain and simple diet.

Bread without flesh is a good diet, as on many botanical excursions I have proved. Tea also may easily be ignored. Just bread and water and delightful toil is all I need - not unreasonably much, yet one ought to be trained and tempered to enjoy life in these brave wilds in full independence of any particular kind of nourishment.

I do live a simple existence.

Who lives content with little possesses everything.

Even Socrates, who lived a very frugal and simple life, loved to go to the market. When his students asked about this, he replied, "I love to go and see all the things I am happy without.

It is desirable that a man be clad so simply that he can lay his hands on himself in the dark, and that he live in all respects so compactly and preparedly, that, if an enemy take the town, he can, like the old philosopher, walk out the gate empty-handed without anxiety.

I don't go looking for somewhere to spend my money. You can step on a tube of toothpaste for a week, if you have to. I spend what I need to and give it away.

For more than five years I maintained myself thus solely by the labour of my hands, and I found, that by working about six weeks in a year, I could meet all the expenses of living.

You are rich if you have enough money to satisfy all your desires. So there are two ways to be rich: you earn, inherit, borrow, beg, or steal enough money to meet all your desires; or you cultivate a simple lifestyle of few desires; that way you always have enough money.

I live like a monk: with one toothbrush, one cake of soap, and a pot of cream.

I drive old cars, all my Patagonia clothes are years and years old, I hardly have anything new. I try to lead a very simple life. I am not a consumer of anything. And I much prefer sleeping on somebody's floor than in a motel room.

I don't buy much. Almost buy nothing. I buy what I need, do it the easiest way possible.

Under the spreading chestnut tree The village smithy stands; The smith, a mighty man is he, With large and sinewy hands; And the muscles of his brawny arms Are strong as iron bands. . . . He earns whate'er he can, And looks the whole world in the face, For he owes not any man. . . . Toiling,-rejoicing,-sorrowing, Onward through life he goes; Each morning sees some task begin, Each evening sees it close; Something attempted, something done, Has earned a night's repose.

So, make a real effort to avoid getting sucked into all the expensive lifestyle habits of typical Americans. Because if you do that, then people with the money will dictate what you do with your life.

SIR,-Your letter of February the 18th came to hand on the 1st instant; and the request of the history of my physical habits would have puzzled me not a little, had it not been for the model with which you accompanied it, of Doctor Rush's answer to a similar inquiry. I live so much like other people, that I might refer to ordinary life as a history of my own. Like my friend the Doctor, I have lived temperately, eating very little animal food, and that not as an aliment, so much as a condiment for the vegetables, which constitute my principle diet.

Living simply makes loving simple.

Free men must live simple lives and have simple pleasures.

Rather than earn money, it was Thoreau's idea to reduce his wants so that he would not need to buy anything. As he went around preaching this ingenious idea, the shopkeepers of Concord hoped he would drop dead.

I am much inclined to live from my rucksack, and let my trousers fray as they like.

I have lived temperately, eating little animal food, and that not as an aliment, so much as a condiment for the vegetables, which constitute my principal diet.

I like living in one room and have never known what people do with the room they are not in.

Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage.

He will always be a slave who does not know how to live upon a little.

Live below your means but within your needs.