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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:
- Oxford Reference: Find a library with Oxford Reference
- Thoreau Institute Thoreau quotation page
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.
Thoreau attribution
This is by the poet, novelist and editor, John Boyle O’Reilly (1844-1890). Although the words appear as above in several collections of quotations and axioms, the line should read “Be true to your word and your work and your friend” as published in his poem, “Rules of the Road” in The Life of John Boyle O’Reilly by James Jeffrey Roche, together with his complete poems and speeches edited by Mrs. John Boyle O’Reilly (New York: Cassell Publishing Co., 1891) p. 533:
Be silent and safe — silence never betrays you;
Be true to your word and your work and your friend;
Put least trust in him who is foremost to praise you,
Nor judge of a road till it draw to the end.
Info from the forthcoming THE QUOTABLE THOREAU edited and compiled by Jeffrey S. Cramer (Princeton University Press, 2011)