Henry David Thoreau Quotes about Friendship

Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.

Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.

Motivational, Friendship, Nature

Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Thoreau on Nature: Sage Words on Finding Harmony with the Natural World”, p.15, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

A friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us. The friend asks no return but that his friend will religiously accept and wear and not disgrace his apotheosis of him. They cherish each other's hopes. They are kind to each other's dreams.

Henry David Thoreau

Friendship, Dream, Kind

"Thoreau and the Art of Life: Precepts and Principles".

We only need to be as true to others as we are to ourselves, that there may be grounds enough for friendship.

Henry David Thoreau

Friendship, Needs, May

Henry David Thoreau, Bradford Torrey, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn (1906). “Journal, ed. by Bradford Torrey, 1837-1846, 1850-Nov. 3, 1861”

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

Henry David Thoreau

Friendship, Best Friend, Happiness

Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Thoreau on Nature: Sage Words on Finding Harmony with the Natural World”, p.29, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.

Henry David Thoreau

Friendship, Best Friend, Ignorance

Henry David Thoreau (2001). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.182, Courier Corporation

The Friend asks no return but that his Friend will religiously accept and wear and not disgrace his apotheosis of him. They cherish each other's hopes. They are kind to each other's dreams.

Henry David Thoreau

Friendship, Dream, Apotheosis

Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.192, Xist Publishing

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

Henry David Thoreau

Friendship, Best Friend, True Love

Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.114, Penguin

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

Friendship, Eye, Snakes

Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.496, Simon and Schuster

Friendship takes place between those who have an affinity for one another, and is a perfectly natural and inevitable result. No professions nor advances will avail.... It is a drama in which the parties have no part to act.

Henry David Thoreau

Friendship, Drama, Party

Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.112, Penguin

Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams.

Henry David Thoreau

Love, Friendship, Best Friend

Friendship is evanescent in every man's experience, and remembered like heat lightning in past summers.

Henry David Thoreau

Friendship, Summer, Past

Henry David Thoreau (1873). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.278

A true Friendship is as wise as it is tender. The parties to it yield implicitly to the guidance of their love, and know no otherlaw nor kindness.

Henry David Thoreau

Friendship, Wise, True Friend

Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.114, Penguin

The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. I have no wealth to bestow on him. If he knows that I am happy in loving him, he will want no other reward. Is not friendship divine in this?

Henry David Thoreau

Friendship, Happiness, Real Friends

Henry David Thoreau (2006). “Thoreau and the Art of Life: Precepts and Principles”, p.9, Heron Dance Press

Even the death of Friends will inspire us as much as their lives. They will leave consolation to the mourners, as the rich leave money to defray the expenses of their funerals, and their memories will be incrusted over with sublime and pleasing thoughts, as monuments of other men are overgrown with moss; for our Friends have no place in the graveyard.

Henry David Thoreau

Friendship, Memories, Men

Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.203, Xist Publishing

A noble person confers no such gift as his whole confidence: none so exalts the giver and the receiver; it produces the truest gratitude. Perhaps it is only essential to friendship that some vital trust should have been reposed by the one in the other. I feel addressed and probed even to the remotest parts of my being when one nobly shows, even in trivial things, an implicit faith in me.... A threat or a curse may be forgotten, but this mild trust translates me.

Henry David Thoreau

Friendship, Trust, Gratitude

Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Familiar Letters (Annotated Edition)”, p.49, Jazzybee Verlag

I would that I were worthy to be any man's Friend.

Henry David Thoreau

Friendship, Men, Worthy

Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.110, Penguin

We inspire friendship in men when we have contracted friendship with the gods.

Henry David Thoreau

Friendship, Men, Inspire

Henry David Thoreau (2008). “Walden, Civil Disobedience, and Other Writings: Authoritative Texts, Journal, Reviews and Posthumous Assessments, Criticism”, W W Norton & Company Incorporated

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

Henry David Thoreau

Friendship, Home, Two

Walden ch. 6 (1854)

Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are.

Henry David Thoreau

Friendship, Giving, Meals

Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.83, Simon and Schuster

Treat your friends for what you know them to be. Regard no surfaces. Consider not what they did, but what they intended.

Henry David Thoreau

Friendship, Treats, Surface

Henry David Thoreau (1993). “A Year in Thoreau's Journal: 1851”, p.314, Penguin

Friendship is never established as an understood relation. It is a miracle which requires constant proofs. It is an exercise of the purest imagination and of the rarest faith!

Henry David Thoreau

Friendship, Exercise, Imagination

Henry David Thoreau (2006). “Thoreau and the Art of Life: Precepts and Principles”, p.9, Heron Dance Press

The only danger in Friendship is that it will end.

Henry David Thoreau

Friendship, Danger, Ends

Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.116, Penguin

What is commonly honored with the name of Friendship is no very profound or powerful instinct. Men do not, after all, love their Friends greatly. I do not often see the farmers made seers and wise to the verge of insanity by their Friendship for one another. They are not often transfigured and translated by love in each other's presence. I do not observe them purified, refined, and elevated by the love of a man.

Henry David Thoreau

Friendship, Wise, Wisdom

Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.110, Penguin

My Friend is that one whom I can associate with my choicest thought.

Henry David Thoreau

Friendship, Thinking, My Friends

Henry David Thoreau (2014). “A Week On The Concord And Merrimack Rivers (Annotated Edition)”, p.229, Jazzybee Verlag

In love and friendship the imagination is as much exercised as the heart; and if either is outraged the other will be estranged. It is commonly the imagination which is wounded first, rather than the heart,--it is so much the more sensitive.

Henry David Thoreau

Friendship, Heart, Imagination

Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.1138, Delphi Classics