Henry David Thoreau Quotes

All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.

On the light of Liberty you saw arise the light of Peace, like "another morn," "Risen on mid-noon;" and the sky on which you closed your eye was cloudless.

Genius: The capacity to see and to express what is simple, simply!

I want to be in a position where I get to start off fresh. I don't have any preconceived notion of how I should feel.

It is a great art to have an abundance of knowledge and experience - to know the richness of life, the beauty of existence, the struggles, the miseries, the laughter, the tears - and yet keep your mind very simple; and you can have a simple mind only when you know how to love.

To know what to leave out and what to put in; just where and just how, ah, that is to have been educated in knowledge of simplicity.

Be an empty page, untouched by words.

The less I seek my source for some definitive, the closer I am to fine.

Intellect is the ability to avoid belaboring the obvious.

You can't believe how hard it is for people to be simple, how much they fear being simple. They worry that if they're simple, people will think they're simpleminded. In reality, of course, it's just the reverse. Clear, tough-minded people are the most simple.

Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free, Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea.

Don’t complicate whatever is not complicated.

Life is for living, not living uptight, see ya somewhere up in the sky.

Be wild; that is how to clear the river.

That's been one of my mantras - focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex.

I have given up the ambition to be a great scholar. I want to be more- simply a human. . . . We are not true humans, but beings who live by a civilization inherited from the past, that keeps us hostage, that confines us. No freedom of movement. Nothing. Everything in us is killed by our calculations for our future, by our social position and cast. You see, I am not happy-yet I am happy. I suffer, but that is part of life. I live, I don't care about my existence, and that is the beginning of wisdom.

The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.

Commonsense is the wick of the candle.

I begin with humility, I act with humility, I end with humility. Humility leads to clarity. Humility leads to an open mind and a forgiving heart. With an open mind and a forgiving heart, I see every person as superior to me in some way; with every person as my teacher, I grow in wisdom. As I grow in wisdom, humility becomes ever more my guide. I begin with humility, I act with humility, I end with humility.

Liberate yourselves from everything you know and look with complete innocence at this infinitely improbable thing before you.

There is nothing more guaranteed to reduce a man to the essentials than to live beneath the sky.

Intelligence complicates. Wisdom simplifies.

Great truths are portions of the soul of man; Great souls are portions of eternity.

May my heart always be open to little birds, who are the secrets of living. Whatever they sing is better than to know. And if men should not hear them - then men are old.