Henry David Thoreau Quotes

No, I was never one of those positive people who believes he can have whatever he sets his sights on. I just kept working at it.

Success is more a function of consistent common sense than it is of genius.

I like to get my hands dirty. Talk is cheap.

I came in 1949, and all of us thought the climate was not just ripe for change. We often delay adjudication. [I]t’s [sic] not a question of evading at all. It’s just the practicalities of life – common sense.

I go with what I know and what I see, and I believe in reality.

The knowledge and experience which produce wisdom can only become a man's individual possession and property by his own free action; and it is as futile to expect these without laborious, painstaking effort, as it is to hope to gather a harvest where the seed has not been sown.

I’m not against thinking; I’m only against thinking that thinking on its own will get you out of a hole. Shovel also needed.

I like hard work and I don’t like pretending things are perfect.

Virtue's guard is labor; ease, her sleep.

Hard labor and good intentions are not sufficient to carry a man through to success.

Genius, without work, is certainly a dumb oracle, and it is unquestionably true that the men of the highest genius have invariably been found to be amongst the most plodding, hard-working, and intent men -- their chief characteristic apparently consisting simply in their power of laboring more intensely and effectively than others.

There is no substitute for work; what seems ease of performance comes from the greatest labor.

The very essence of success is practice.

Nothing is denied to well-directed labor.

Nothing is going to be handed to you -- you have to make things happen.

There is no boon in nature. All the blessings we enjoy are the fruits of labor, toil, self-denial, and study.

There is no substitute for work.

You'll never succeed in idealizing hard work. Before you can dig mother earth you've got to take off your ideal jacket. The harder a man works, at brute labor, the thinner becomes his idealism, the darker his mind.

Nothing is achieved without toil.

It is certain that the greatest poets, orators, statesmen, and historians, men of the most brilliant and imposing talents, have labored as hard, if not harder, than day laborers; and that the most obvious reason why they have been superior to other men is that they have taken more pains than other men.

When you look at the accomplishments of accomplished people and you say, “Boy, that must have been really hard,” ... that was probably easy. And conversely, when you look at something that looks easy, that was probably hard. And so you’re never going to know which is which until you actually go and do it.

Genius begins beautiful works, but only labor finishes them.

What is golden is miles under your belt, miles, miles, miles.

If you want it you must obtain it by great labor.

Find as many opportunities as you can and clock as many hours as you can.