Thoreau wrote the sentence in his Journal on 11 March 1856, where it closes a long refusal of a suggestion that he travel abroad. It was first printed in Early Spring in Massachusetts (Houghton, Mifflin, 1881), pp. 114–115, and the wording on the scanned page matches the popular version word for word.
“That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest” Henry David Thoreau, Journal, 11 March 1856; first printed in Early Spring in Massachusetts, ed. H. G. O. Blake (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1881), 114–15. Verified via Quotle.info.
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Provenance
The source
Source
Journal entry, 11 March 1856
First printed in
Early Spring in Massachusetts: From the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau
Edition
Edited by H. G. O. Blake · Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston, 1881 · pp. 114–115
Language
Written in English — no translation involved
When it is proposed to me to go abroad, rub off some rust, and better my condition in a worldly sense, I fear lest my life would lose some of its homeliness. If these fields, and streams, and woods, the phenomena of nature here, and the simple occupations of the inhabitants should cease to interest and inspire me, no culture or wealth would atone for the loss. […] The sight of a marsh hawk in Concord meadows is worth more to me than the entry of the allies into Paris. In this sense I am not ambitious. I do not wish my native soil to become exhausted and run out through neglect. Only that traveling is good which reveals to me the value of home and enables me to enjoy it better. That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
The Journal entry of 11 March 1856, as printed on pp. 114–115 of the 1881 Blake selection. The bracketed ellipsis marks several sentences on Paris and Concord omitted here; the bold on the closing sentence is added; a stray comma in the 1881 setting (“a marsh, hawk”) is silently corrected.
The sentence closes Thoreau’s refusal of the suggestion that he travel abroad, in the Journal entry for 11 March 1856, printed on page 115 of the 1881 first printing ↗ — the wording there matches the popular version word for word.
Quote Investigator ↗ traces the adage to that 1856 journal entry and concludes that “Henry David Thoreau deserves credit for the statement he wrote in his journal in 1856.”
Wikiquote ↗ carries the line in its sourced Journals list under 11 March 1856 — not in a disputed or misattributed section.
Quote Investigator also tracks how the line spread: Maturin M. Ballou’s Edge-Tools of Speech (1899), then the eleventh edition of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations (1938), which cited the Journal and the March 11, 1856 date — see the citation chain ↗.
✓Public domain
Thoreau died in 1862, and this passage first reached print in Early Spring in Massachusetts (Houghton, Mifflin, 1881) — half a century before the 1931 United States copyright cutoff — so both the text and that edition of it are in the public domain. Thoreau wrote in English, so no translation copyright is involved.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
Where it goes wrong
The attribution is sound. It is the wording, and the question of who thought of it first, where quote sites go astray.
✕
Wording“That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest.” variant
BrainyQuote ↗ prints this form — “rich” for “richest” — and cites no source at all. The superlative is doing the work in Thoreau’s sentence: he is making a ranking, not a description.
✕
Wording“That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.” variant
Quote Investigator records this article-dropped form in Rudolf Flesch’s The Book of Unusual Quotations (1957). Ballou’s 1899 Edge-Tools of Speech still printed “the richest,” and so does the manuscript journal as printed in 1881. Compare the versions ↗
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OriginRobert Chambers precursor, not source
Quote Investigator points to an 1847 essay collection by the Edinburgh publisher Robert Chambers containing “It would thus appear that all the best pleasures are the cheapest” — a thematic ancestor, not Thoreau’s sentence. QI still credits Thoreau with the statement he wrote. Read the chain ↗
✓Thoreau wrote it himself, in his Journal on 11 March 1856 — you can read it on the scanned page ↗ of the 1881 first printing.
Context
Why it mattered
March 1856 found Thoreau being told, in effect, to get out more. Someone had proposed that he go abroad, “rub off some rust,” and better his condition in a worldly sense. He spent the rest of the entry declining, and the famous sentence is the last line of that refusal.
Read cold, it sounds like thrift advice. Read in place, it is a defence of Concord over Paris — a marsh hawk over the meadows was worth more to him, he wrote, than the entry of the allies into Paris. The claim is not that cheap things are good, but that the person whose delight costs least is the one hardest to impoverish.
Only that traveling is good which reveals to me the value of home and enables me to enjoy it better.
How a private notebook line reached Bartlett’s
Thoreau never published the sentence. It sat in the manuscript journals until H. G. O. Blake, who edited them for publication, began drawing seasonal anthologies out of them — Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881) was the first, and it is where this passage appears in print for the first time.
From there Quote Investigator tracks the line into the compilation trade: Ballou’s Edge-Tools of Speech in 1899, then the eleventh edition of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations in 1938, which cited the Journal and the March 11, 1856 date. The full chain ↗
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1817–1862 · American naturalist, essayist & philosopher
Henry David Thoreau spent two years in a cabin at Walden Pond and the rest of his short life mostly in and around Concord, Massachusetts, arguing in print that a life stripped of surplus is a life with more in it. Walden (1854) is the book everyone knows; the two-million-word Journal he kept for roughly a quarter-century is where most of his sharpest single sentences actually live. He died of tuberculosis in 1862, at forty-four, with the Journal unpublished.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source
Thoreau, Henry David. Early Spring in Massachusetts: From the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau. Edited by H. G. O. Blake. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1881, 114–15. Journal entry dated March 11, 1856.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest’?” Last verified 7 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/that-man-is-the-richest-whose-pleasures-are-the-cheapest/