I have seen some who did not know when to turn aside their eyes in meeting yours. A truly confident and magnanimous spirit is wiser than to contend for the mastery in such encounters. Serpents alone conquer by the steadiness of their gaze. My friend looks me in the face and sees me, that is all.

Henry David Thoreau

Simplify your life. Don't waste the years struggling for things that are unimportant. Don't burden yourself with possessions. Keep your needs and wants simple and enjoy what you have. Don't destroy your peace of mind by looking back, worrying about the past. Live in the present. Simplify!

Henry David Thoreau

simple struggle past

It's the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us. The question is not what you look at but what you see.

Henry David Thoreau

beauty-within looks

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.

Henry David Thoreau

dead-poets-society nature adventure

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined...

Henry David Thoreau

motivational inspirational life

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

Henry David Thoreau

motivational positive inspirational

The only people who ever get anyplace interesting are the people who get lost.

Henry David Thoreau

lost people interesting

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.

Henry David Thoreau

single inspiration life

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

Henry David Thoreau

song men life

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this, or the like of this. I wish to live ever as to derive my satisfactions and inspirations from the commonest events, everyday phenomena, so that what my senses hourly perceive, my daily walk, the conversation of my neighbors, may inspire me, and I may dream of no heaven but that which lies about me.

Henry David Thoreau

inspiration dream lying

There is no remedy for love but to love more.

Henry David Thoreau

break-up love life

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.

Henry David Thoreau

motivational inspirational life

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.

Henry David Thoreau

forgiveness music success

be yourself- not your idea of what you think somebody else's idea of yourself should be.

Henry David Thoreau

being-yourself real inspirational

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

Henry David Thoreau

motivational inspirational life

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

Henry David Thoreau

business simple life

I am a happy camper so I guess I’m doing something right. Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.

Henry David Thoreau

butterfly happy happiness

The greatest tragedy in life is to spend your whole life fishing only to discover it was never fish that you were after.

Henry David Thoreau

tragedy fishing life-is

To have made even one person's life a little better, that is to succeed.

Henry David Thoreau

philanthropy succeed littles

I love Nature partly because she is not man, but a retreat from him. None of his institutions control or pervade her. There a different kind of right prevails. In her midst I can be glad with an entire gladness. If this world were all man, I could not stretch myself, I should lose all hope. He is constraint, she is freedom to me. He makes me wish for another world. She makes me content with this.

Henry David Thoreau

nature wish men

The secret of achievement is to hold a picture of a successful outcome in mind.

Henry David Thoreau

achievement success inspirational