Henry David Thoreau Quotations: LIFE
May we so love as never to have occasion to repent of our love.—"Chastity and Sensuality"
Men die of fright and live of confidence.—Journal, 1850
Men have become the tools of their tools. The man who independently plucked the fruits when he was hungry is become a farmer.—Journal, 14 July 1845
Men should not go to New Zealand to write or think of Greece and Rome, nor more to New England. New earths, new themes expect us. Celebrate not the Garden of Eden, but your own.—Journal, 22 October 1857
Methinks my present experience is nothing; my past experience is all in all. I think that no experience which I have to-day comes up to, or is comparable with, the experience of my boyhood.—Journal, 16 July 1851
Music is the sound of the circulation in nature's veins. It is the flux which melts nature.—Journal, 24 April 1841
My actual life is a fact, in view of which I have no occasion to congratulate myself; but for my faith and aspiration I have respect. It is from these that I speak. Every man's position is in fact too simple to be described.—Thoreau to H.G.O. Blake, 27 March 1848
My friend is cold and reserved because his love for me is waxing and not waning.—Journal, 20 March 1842
My imagination, my love and reverence and admiration, my sense of miraculous, is not so excited by any event as by the remembrance of my youth.—Journal, June 1850
My only integral experience is in my vision.—Thoreau to H.G.O. Blake, 2 May 1848
