Widely attributed to Thoreau on the Internet:
"Be true to your work, your word, and your friend."
Can anyone find a source verifying that Thoreau actually wrote this?
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Although frequently quoted, we could not find a source for the quotation "Be true to your work, your word, and your friend" in Thoreau’s work or sources about his work.
Quotation sources searched:
Other works searched:
Volunteer Jim spent a couple of hours at a university looking through the indexes in back of many works by Thoreau - looking for words like "work" "truth" and "true". He even cross-checked the words true, work, friend and friends in:
Ogden, Marlene A. and Clifton Kellet. Walden, a concordance. New York: Garland Pub., 1985. ISBN: 0824087860
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Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. Edited by J. Lyndon Shanley. Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1971. ISBN: 0691061947
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The person who asked this question contacted a few Thoreau experts and they were unable to verify the quote either.
Until all Thoreau’s work is in a truly searchable electronic form it is possible he did write the words but for now the quotation can’t be verified.