Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
Genuine
Yes. In Walden (1854), Chapter 18, “Conclusion”.
Found word for word by program in the full text.
- Work
- Walden (Walden; or, Life in the Woods), 1854
- Where
- Chapter 18, “Conclusion”
- Found at
- Paragraph 519 of the text
Researched by AI; checked by program against the full text on 31 October 2026. Editorial review: pending. How we check
On the page
[…] So will help you God, and so only. Every nail driven should be as another rivet in the machine of the universe, you carrying on the work.
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board. The hospitality was as cold as the ices. I thought that there was no need of ice to freeze them. […]
How long shall we sit in our porticoes practising idle and musty virtues, which any work would make impertinent? […]
There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dulness. I need only suggest what kind of sermons are still listened to in the most enlightened countries. […]
The scene
Near the end of the Conclusion, after rejecting fashionable celebrity and social display, Thoreau imagines or recalls a lavish meal without sincerity. He leaves unsatisfied, contrasts fine wine with a purer nourishment that cannot be bought, and ends by preferring the genuine hospitality of a man living in a hollow tree to a king’s reception.
What it means
Sincere human dealings and contact with reality matter more than wealth, reputation, or merely outward attentions. An elaborate welcome without truth cannot nourish him.
Often misread
The opening can sound like a wholesale rejection of affection. Its immediate example is a banquet that supplies food and deference but withholds sincerity; the contrast is with hollow hospitality and prestige.
Topics
Related quotes
- It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not. André Gide
- I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become. (misattributed) Carl Gustav Jung
- Refusing to lie about what one knows, and resisting oppression. Albert Camus
- I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
- If someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth, and it really were so that the truth is outside Christ, I would rather remain with Christ than with the truth. Fyodor Dostoevsky
Sources
Cite it
Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854), Chapter 18, “Conclusion”. Checked at Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/rather-than-love-than-money-than-fame-give-me-truth/ (31 October 2026).
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People who checked this entry against its source, under their own names. Their checks do not change the verdict: an editor reviews every entry.
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