UPSC Express

Henry David Thoreau

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

Our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify.

Things do not change; we change.

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

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 mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.

This world is but a canvas to our imagination.

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

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

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

There is no remedy for love but to love more.

I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.

Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.

None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.

That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.

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

Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.

All good things are wild, and free.

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.

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

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

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.

Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends… Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.

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

Dreams are the touchstones of our character.

Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.

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

It is never too late to give up our prejudices.

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

That government is best which governs least.

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.

Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.

To be awake is to be alive.

An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.

Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

Every man is the builder of a temple called his body.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.